Pino Donaggio (Dressed to Kill) Dressed to Kill
Pino Donaggio composed the score for Dressed to Kill, his third collaboration with Brian De Palma after Carrie (1976) and Home Movies (1979). He would go on to score Blow Out (1981), Body Double (1984), and Raising Cain (1992) -- six De Palma films in sixteen years.
Donaggio avoided replicating Herrmann's Psycho score and found his own register
The obvious temptation for a Psycho-derivative thriller was to replicate Bernard Herrmann's shrieking strings. Donaggio went the other direction. His score for Dressed to Kill uses breathy vocals to convey sensuality and alternates romantic passages with sudden percussive blows -- lulling the audience before delivering violence. The approach is closer to Italian giallo scoring than to Herrmann's stabbing staccato. (filmobsessive)
The museum sequence is scored as a romantic ballet, not a suspense set piece
Donaggio built the museum sequence from contrasting instrumental voices -- violins for Kate, wind instruments for the stranger. The music treats the pursuit as a love story, not a thriller, which is what makes the subsequent elevator murder so disorienting: the score has trained the audience to expect romance, and the razor replaces it with violence. The eight-minute near-silent sequence depends almost entirely on Donaggio's scoring to carry the emotional narrative.
De Palma's collaboration with Donaggio was built on visual storytelling without dialogue
De Palma played a fundamental role in Donaggio's career, steering the classically trained violinist and pop singer toward film composition. The partnership worked because De Palma built long silent sequences that needed musical scoring rather than dialogue:
"I like long, silent sequences musically scored. I like ballet, I like opera, I like long orchestral pieces where you just rely on the image and the music." -- Brian De Palma, MUBI Notebook (2012)
The Criterion Collection's 2015 Blu-ray of Dressed to Kill included a new interview with Donaggio about the score and his working relationship with De Palma. See Physical Media Releases (Dressed to Kill) for the full special features list.
The score alternates dreaminess and frenzy to mirror the film's structure
The film's dual register -- erotic and violent -- is mirrored exactly in Donaggio's scoring. The shower fantasy, the museum pursuit, and the taxi seduction are scored as lush romantic passages. The elevator murder, the subway chase, and the nightmare coda rupture those passages with harsh, percussive attacks. The structural argument is that desire and violence occupy the same musical space -- the score cannot distinguish between them until the razor appears, just as the camera cannot.