: (Bernard Herrmann) A clear homage to
several Alfred Hitchcock films, Brian De Palma's psychological thriller
received mixed responses upon its widespread debut in
1973, but it has accumulated greater respect through the years. The
writer and director was inspired by a news story about conjoined twins
and wrote a tale of murder involving one pair that exploits themes of
voyeurism and women's liberation along the journey of a standard murder
mystery. A woman who had been separated from her twin has sex with a guy
she met on a game show, and her twin shows up to slash him to death.
When the woman's ex-husband arrives on the scene, they hide the body,
which is necessary because a female reporter living nearby witnessed the
aftermath of the event through her window. The film follows her plight
to gain the attention of the police while the mystery of the twins is
revealed. Not surprisingly, there's severe mental disturbance factoring
in the first twin, as her evil sister is dead and the surviving one
manifests her personality whenever she has sex. By the end, most of the
leading men are dead and everyone else is left in a dazed stupor, making
a most unhappy story. Such things were like catnip for
composer Bernard Herrmann, who had not only established himself as the
maestro of the genre in decades before but also proved in
the prior year that he wasn't afraid to score a somewhat kinky
sex scene of 1970's cultural appeal. The editor for
needed temp music for a screening to investors and decided upon
selections from
, and De Palma loved the
music so much in the new context that sought to hire Herrmann at that
juncture. The composer had returned to England by this time, largely
banished from Hollywood by his own explosive personality, but he was
intrigued enough by this concept to attend a screening in America.
Herrmann was enraged by the temp music usage, however, and demanded its
removal before he watched the rest of the film.
After viewing
Sisters, Herrmann likened the picture
to
Psycho and was eager to work on it, partly to revive his
career, though he wasn't happy about the filmmakers initially balking at
his $25,000 fee. After additional money was obtained to hire Herrmann,
he produced exactly the score that was expected of him, but the
perfectionist did express dissatisfaction with the final mix of the
music in the film. Everything about his score and his reaction to the
production process was predictable by this point, and listeners
certainly know what they are to hear. His orchestra is joined by a Moog
synthesizer to represent the twin sisters; Herrmann had used the
electronic instrument as a theremin replacement in
Endless Night
and liked its ability to produce the piercing wailing sound he desired,
though the performer did cause him to lose his temper at the sessions
when they didn't operate it well enough. Metallic percussion is very
important to the film, matching the knife and demeanor of the murders,
and chimes, tubular bells, and vibraphone join cymbals to yield these
tones. The heavy lifting is accomplished by the strings and woodwinds,
however, with the brass utilized mostly for the outright horror
sequences. Structurally, the score has a fair amount in common with
Cape Fear from a decade earlier, though there is some more
streamlined suspense reminiscent of
Psycho as well. Compared to
the composer's other early 1970's scores, however,
Sisters
largely forgoes the earlier romance tones that had tugged more
convincingly at the doomed love stories in his prior two works. The
result in this context is a tumultuous and demented experience with an
occasional twist of humor and a completely frigid romantic element. His
approach is melodic as per usual, with the interplay between the score's
two main motifs very well interpolated throughout. But don't expect
these highly troubled themes to afford any comfort or attraction, their
purpose residing on the grotesque side of the narrative only. These
ideas are certainly impressive and functional, but with the softer
portions languishing in anonymity, you're left beaten by the score's
sour and tragic personality in the end.
Often mingling are Herrmann's themes for insanity and
the twins in
Sisters. The former is the score's murder fanfare, a
descending four-note phrase banging loudly on percussion and brass with
a child-like taunt to it. This idea is absolutely crazed in the first
minute of "Prelude (Main Title)" with extreme malice but reduces to
tease the inevitable as it dances lightly at 0:45 into "The Cake/The
Car" on seemingly innocent woodwinds, continuing with more urgency on
lower reeds in 1:24. It blows up to start "Phillip's Murder" with
undeniable force on brass, the clanging chimes representing the murder
weapon and the synthesizer denoting the mental instability. In the
middle of the film, Herrmann toys with the motif, giving it an almost
humorously plucked rhythmic posture on strings at the outset of
"Clean-Up" and subtly hinting it on woodwinds in "The Clinic." It
returns to its initial fanfare of doom with extended treatment at 0:39
into "Separation Nightmare" for the hallucination sequence. The motif
again absolutely erupts in the chime-banging chaos during "Breton's
Murder" but is reduced to solitary horns at 0:49 into "Aftermath" as
everything has gone to hell. Countering this flashy identity is the
actual main theme of the movie, one representing the twin sisters. Using
a chromatic structure reminiscent of the secondary section of the main
Cape Fear theme, Herrmann applies descending treble lines matched
by slowing ascending bass lines to increase tension. While not original
in this score for the composer, the two lines represent the sickly
converging personalities of the twins well. This theme emerges out of
the fanfare on strings at 0:51 into "Prelude (Main Title)," dissolving
in tempo and tone at the end of the cue like the effect of a slowing
cassette tape. It stutters in its first two notes only in repetition
during "Breton," a construct that almost suggests that the sisters theme
is being suppressed by the prescription drugs central to the story. The
motif's bassline alone exists in the suspense of "The Scar" as a bizarre
sex scene climax; it's among the funnier orgasm cues ever to exist,
especially with the wailing Moog synthesizer at the end. It's confirmed:
you could certainly count on Benny Herrmann to conjure some of the least
romantic sex music ever played for the silver screen.
The theme for the sisters thrives throughout the score,
wild on synth and chimes in the middle of "Phillip's Murder." Its
descending line alone serves as counterpoint to the insanity fanfare in
"Clean-Up" while the upper melodic line survives by itself in "Split
Screen" with sparse tension. The idea continues with more resonance for
a moment in "The Plastic Bag," becomes faint on low woodwinds in "The
Cake Box" and "Apartment House," and is carried by striking strings over
woodwinds at 0:07 in the quasi-source piece, "The Siamese Twins." The
descending lines start "The Dream" on their own, but the ascending
bassline slowly joins. The full sisters theme opens "Separation
Nightmare" in lighter shades but with the same cold personality, and it
earns more of a horror stance in "Dirge" at a slower tempo. The descent
solely haunts at the start of "Aftermath" while only the ascending line
survives at the end of the disillusioned "Finale Sisters," the two lines
clearly representing the separate sisters by this point. Mixed in
between is Herrmann's romance material, definitely eerie and doomed from
the start and exuding no warmth whatsoever. Whimsically pretty in the
middle of "The Dressing Room," these loosely connected motifs are
adapted out of the descending lines of the sisters theme as a waltz in
"The Apartment," then struggling to continue on strings in "Duo" and
colder than ever. It officially dies out with slowly alternating notes
in "Window View" after the killing and contributes to the melancholy
coda from the descending lines in "Aftermath." Some of the cues don't
really represent the thematic narrative well enough, "Apartment
House/The Windows" and "The Couch" guiding an unengaging midsection. The
final third ("The Solution," "Hypnotic Trance," and "The Syringe") has
the same problem, and the closing in "Finale Sisters" explores new
territory and does nothing to wrap the prior themes. Overall, the music
effectively gets your attention, but it's difficult to enjoy on album.
The thematic handling isn't as tight in the second half, causing it to
swirl around the drain. That was likely the whole point by the composer,
but it's not satisfying as a listening experience. The director turned
again to Herrmann for the superior
Obsession a few years later.
On album, the original film version of the recording for
Sisters
is lost, with only the album arrangement available on several CD
releases through the years, a limited Music Box Records offering in 2024
cleaning the sound as best as possible for the mentally unstable
atmosphere.
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