The Telegraph covered a very strange story when the inevitable anti-The Artist publicity machine began in full swing with Kim Novak, star of Hitchcock's Vertigo, chiming in: "Novak took out a full-page advert in Variety magazine earlier this week, where she said: 'The [Artist] could and should have been able to stand on its own without depending upon Bernard Herrmann's score from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo to provide it more drama.' The statement was headed by the words: 'I want to report a rape.'"
The fact that Novak put her name to such a disgusting attack on a film in the first instance is bad enough - indeed the term "rape" is rarely defined as "a film score used on another film". And I am sure that any victim of such an act will fail to see the lighter tone of the term.
If her problem is the use of the score, then why pick on The Artist alone? I don't recall Novak being up-in-arms about the use of Herrmann's score in Tom Ford's A Single Man. And we are meant to believe that Novak has plenty of money to throw about and spend on full-page adverts to insult a film? Quick Question - Name three Kim Novak films. I got Vertigo...
It’s tragic when it is painfully obvious what is going on – Novak was paid a certain amount of money to take out the advert in the hope that anti-Artist publicity will knock it off its pedestal. In the same way that last year the whole King-George-actually-wasn't-very-nice campaign tried to stop The King's Speech from winning the prize. This was a huge misstep and an insult to many people in the words used to describe the used of score-sampling (fully credited). I would say a bigger insult is when, watching reality TV show The Apprentice, I hear music from incredible soundtracks like There Will Be Blood, Wall-E and The Village. More insulting is the use of the incredible Tron: Legacy soundtrack on the new Virgin advert. The subtle use of a great score within a film that celebrates cinema is the least of my worries.
Simon Columb
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