Hollywood Sound

Hey,
This might be a bit off-topic but thought I'd mention it anyway. Yesterday's lec with the Hollywood film soundtracks and the earlier lectures on Al Jolson and Bernard Herrmann kind of reminded me of Sunset Boulevard (1950). The theme in SB's opening sequence is quite similar to Psycho and Vertigo in that they are quite melodramatic with the crescendo patterns and sinister undertones.
There's an interesting scene where Norma Desmond (as the faded silent film star complete with her decadent '20s mansion) laments the advent of sound during a conversation with her then-New Hollywood 'ghostwriter' and future pimp, Joe Gillis.
JG: "You used to be in silent pictures, you used to be big."
ND: "I am big. It's the pictures that got small..."
Norma goes on to talk about how she can say anything she wants with her eyes.
Especially as a b/w film, I think the score adds to (or rather creates) the creepy decrepit mood and externalises Norma's distorted sense of self and Joe's opportunism; the music adds a colour to it, so to speak.
The special edition DVD also has a featurette on the famous composer for SB, German emigre, Franz Waxman. It concentrates on the leitmotivs (Bebop for the hip cat Joe and Valentinoesque tango melodies for old-fashioned Norma), and how Waxman and Billy Wilder 'condensed' the music to link across different scenes.
Stella