REEL NEWS: Nobody has got a bad word to say about The Artist, right? Wrong! Kim Novak, a key icon of the late 1950s, has taken whole buckets of umbrage at the film-makers' decision to use snippets of Bernard Herrmann's score to Vertigo(1958) in their much-acclaimed silent film.
Novak, star of the Hitchcock classic, went so far as to take out a full-page advertisement in Varietyto express her disgust."I want to report a rape," the copy reads begins. "I feel as if my body – or, at least my body of work – has been violated by the movie, The Artist. The film could and should have been able to stand on its own without depending on Bernard Herrmann's score from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo".
Novak didn’t stop there. “In my opinion, the combined efforts of the composer, director, Jimmy Stewart and myself were all violated,” the ad continued.
Michel Hazanavicius, director of The Artist,understandably bemused, did his best to calm the troubled waters.
“I love Bernard Herrmann and his music has been used in many different films,” he said. “I’m very pleased to have it in mine. I respect Kim Novak greatly and I’m sorry to hear she disagrees.”
It is a weird one. Hazanavicius was not attempting to pass the Herrmann excerpt off as an original piece of work. As Novak acknowledges, the great composer is credited at the end of the film. Somebody needs a little sit down and a nice cup of tea.
