THAS: Scene from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre #1

#1 - Composition - The Gas Stop Intermezzo

Five
Progrefsive Movements

for the

Camera Forte

COMPOSED

AND FINGERED

By

Tobe Hooper

Part I - Vagone Allegretto *

* Fast Wagon!

----Vivace

camera ritardando

Fine

Part II - Andante

Blue work-shirt 1st trumpet bridges the transition with a slurred A-flat sit-down, cuing the faint entrance of the porch-door cello.

(Hooper's directing is akin to orchestral composition.
He treats objects in his shots like instrumental lines,
and always tries never to miss a fluid bridge on action
and movement.)

The female flutists' Bathroom-Break harmony is also gracefully bridged from the previous movement:* †

* notice the girls still exiting in the background

† (The tonic chord [shot], methodically returned to:)

(Hooper's Melodic Counterpoint:
Two melodic voices - the four instrumentalists in the
foreground, the two in the background - become caught
in harmonic interdependence within the camera-
composition; Altman, for another example, thrives on
this creation of diegetic polyphony)

The Cook and Washboy Medley

The washrag percussion echoes across the orchestration like a shadow flitting across faces:

The flutes are picked up again at a return to the tonic shot:

Used in reaction to the tonic flutes flitting in, the dominant Fifth chord:

... the dominant Fifth creates melodic instability, and the Brass POV of the Cook-Cello eying the flute line for his first time creates a creepy tremolo...

(It's the predator spotting the prey for his first
time, the onlooking horns having little idea
of the grave presentiment of the moment.)

(And a return to the tonic comfort and banality
of the establishing shot:)

Part III - Soda Machine Appassionato
alla breve
ass-shot molto staccatissimo



----"ass"elerando *-----

* accelerando

----Agitato----

Allegro in D-flat for Whip-Pan and Fiddle

(Camera-inside-van [above] switches to camera-outside-
van [below], the two shots made rhythmically [and
geometrically] parallel, like two instruments passing
a lietmotif in a symphony)
s

* "Dammit to hell, we should have stopped back there for gas!"

* sforzando

Part IV - Fool's Errand in Three Pieces
----Dolly-track Maestoso----

No. 1, Into the Store

No. 2, The Knife Interlude

----Adagio----

(One simple, sustained moment separating the
two mirroring dolly shots of Jerry leaving the van
and Jerry returning to the van.)

Tuba dolce begins the passage...

"You think I said something to make him mad?"

... and the composition segues to the trumpeter, bruscamente.

* "Franklin, you're crazier than he was!"

No. 3, Out of the Store

The meeting of the melodies, the flutes and horns converging.

Part V - Ritornello

D.S. al Fine (return to il segno
and end at Fine.)

(A dolly sweep along the van closes out the scene - bookends
with the dolly sweep along the van that opens the scene)

----Larghissimo----

(Slow crawl sublimely initiated upon Sally's notice of the segno rosso:)

----Accelerando----

--------... poco a poco...--------