May the Fourth: Hour V

John Williams created some of the most memorable music in movie history for the Star Wars films, but one of my favorite moments wasn’t really his at all. Remember this ominous three-note motif from when Han, Luke, Chewie, and Obi-Wan emerge from the Millennium Falcon’s smuggling compartments? If you know your film history, it should sound familiar.

Here it is in Bernard Herrman’s legendary score for Alfred Hitchcock’s horror masterpiece Psycho:

And here it is from Herrmann again, in his glorious track “God’s Lonely Man” from Martin Scorsese’s landmark Taxi Driver (wait for the 44s mark):

Editor Paul Hirsch, who worked with Herrmann on several Brian De Palma films in the ‘70s, reports using Herrmann’s three-note cue on the temp track for the movie; Williams, deliberately or no, then incorporated it into the finished product. These three notes connect three films that changed cinema in three very different ways. That’s my kind of Easter egg.