comparison . It wasn ’ t the jazz score Hitchcock had been expecting , but was written for string orchestra . Budgetary constraints meant that a full ensemble wasn ’ t within Herrmann ’ s reach . All the same , his soundtrack music draws on jazz rhythms and on the freedoms of the new jazz for some of its more dramatic effects . Everyone remembers the shower scene , though here , as in many other places , director and composer argued fiercely about whether the images should be underscored , or played out with only “ natural ” sound effects , if a woman ’ s dying screams and the sound of a butcher knife on flesh can be considered “ natural ”. Famously , we never actually see the blade touching Janet Leigh ’ s skin , though a large proportion of first-time viewers claim to have done so . We do , though , hear it .
Even if Kind of Blue evokes a cool , sophisticated world and Psycho the terrifying violence and inbred eccentricity to be found when one moved out beyond the city limit , turned over the American rock and looked underneath , nobody could deny that beneath and behind Miles ’ quiet , smooth grooves there lurked the spectre of racial violence , police brutality ( he had experienced it first hand ) and social selectivity . Though he had grown up in a middle-class environment not so very different from that enjoyed by Marion Crane ( Janet Leigh ) and her kind , it was only thinly separated from a very different reality , as Marion was to discover when she crossed the imaginary line . By the end of the coming decade , Miles was no longer interested in sublimating the horror and the turmoil ; he was invoking it directly in his new music . And while we consider the parallels between music and movies , it ’ s worth remembering that the first great turning point in Miles ’ playing , the next important sign of his move out of bebop ( which never suited his sensibility ) into something modal and more abstract , came through improvising a soundtrack for Louis Malle ’ s dark-toned 1957 Ascenseur pour l ’ échafaud ( Lift to the Scaffold ), a film whose indictment of modern technology and communications masquerades as a murder mystery .
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