Detailed production files about the musical score for Spellbound reveal an intense and fraught collaboration among music editor Audray Granville, director Alfred Hitchcock, composer Miklós Rózsa, and, producer David O. Selznick. In contrast to Rebecca, for which Hitchcock assumed a back seat in the scoring, his music directions for Spellbound are more specific—and contrary to Selznick’s. Granville, whose influence stretches from the preview score to the final dubbing of Rózsa’s theremin-infused score, sought to reconcile these differences. Her editing is deftly effective—not only maintaining the motivic integrity of Rózsa’s score but also shifting the score’s emotional weight from its misogynist villains toward the beleaguered heroine (Ingrid Bergman). Ultimately, the collaborative tensions of Spellbound proved unsustainable: the final result disappointed all four players. Nevertheless, the score’s popular reception—abetted by another music-based publicity campaign and soundtrack album—made it one of the best-known scores of the studio era.
Undergraduate Econometrics Instruction: Through Our Classes, Darkly
