Alfred Hitchcock's Point of view - French Film Music

In recorded music as in film, then, the notion of the solitary artist is problematic. In the production of a master tape, the creative source is rarely singular. It includes the person or team who wrote the song, the singer or group who performs it, the arranger, producer and sound engineer. Even though Paul McCartney wrote ‘Yesterday’ alone, then sang and played guitaron the original studio session with none of the other Beatles present, it was still George Martin who suggested adding a string quartet and helped make it what it was. Then, once the master tape has left the studio, there are the packaging and image designers and, since the 1970s, those who produce the video. Of course, all of these interventions make for high production costs,which mean that profitability is crucial, in a market where all records cost roughly the same (however much is spent making them), where sales are unpredictable, and where outlay is often higher than return given that as manyas 80 per cent of album releases may fail to break even. The cultural industries, then, wed art to industry. Alfred Hitchcock once described the creative paradox of the film director as that of a painter given canvas, brushes and palette worth 1.3 million dollars and allowed to paint anything at all as long as it brings in 2.3 million dollars. It is this endemic contradiction which has placed popular music at the heart of cultural debate in France. This is true of other countries too, but in France it has taken a particularly intense and fascinating form because cultural values have for centuries been high on the national agenda. Throughout the twentieth century but particularly since the Second World War, the growth of a local music industry dependent on technologies and styles which have become global, with theUSA at their core, has been seen as jeopardising the French cultural exception. It is the historical background to this conflict which I want to trace in thisfirst chapter.