Ennio Morricone (1928-2020)

[Dylan]

Ennio Morricone

[flyonthewall2983]

The GOAT

[artfilmfan]

Ennio Morricone

Sad news. I listened to the Cinema Paradiso soundtrack again just this past weekend, after not having listened to it for a long time.

[Big Ben]

Ennio Morricone

You'd be hard pressed to find a more influential film composer. I remember seeing parodies of Morricone's work in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly before even seeing the film he actually composed the music for. A terrible loss.

[colinr0380]

You'd be hard pressed to find a more influential film composer. I remember seeing parodies of Morricone's work in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly before even seeing the film he actually composed the music for. A terrible loss.

So many great scores. The Leone films are amazing, but also many other spaghetti westerns benefited from his work: Face To Face, The Great Silence, the Trinity films. Plus scores for Bertolucci (Before The Revolution, Partner, 1900; La Luna), Bellocchio (Fists In The Pocket), Pasolini (The Hawks and the Sparrows, Theorem, the Trilogy of Life), Bava (Danger: Diabolik), Pontecorvo (Battle of Algiers, Burn!), Argento (The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, The Cat o' Nine Tails, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Stendhal Syndrome), Sam Fuller (White Dog, Thieves After Dark), De Palma (The Untouchables, Casualties of War, Mission To Mars), Polanski (Frantic). Even Tinto Brass with The Key!

Not to mention John Carpenter's remake of The Thing!

I really like his run of giallo films in the 1970s, particularly the work on Aldo Lado's films Night Train Murders, the children's singing turning into a kind of black mass in Who Saw Her Die? and especially the breathless score to the extraordinary Short Night of Glass Dolls. I also love the moaning, groaning, almost avant garde sense to the opening suicide montage scene of Autopsy (NSFW) (something which places it in the company of the opening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre).

His score for The Mission was very famous at the time (and used in any number of adverts!), though just as good a mix of the mournful and operatic is Casualties of War from a couple of years later.

The Guardian obituary and BBC Radio has been highlighting Chi Mai composed for the 1971 film Maddalena (NSFW) but in the UK became a hit after being used in the 1981 BBC series The Life and Times of David Lloyd George. (I still think it had a bit of an influence on the Inspector Morse theme!)

I also really want to highlight the wonderful score from the 1973 adaptation of 'Tis Pity She's A Whore. It is hard to think of that film feeling as emotional without his music to underscore it. Maybe that's the key to how Morricone's best scores work - that they speak eloquently for the characters who often cannot express themselves, either because they are taciturn (the Man With No Name), emotionally broken (the Michael J. Fox character in Casualties of War) or dead (the casualties on either side of The Battle of Algiers). Amusingly the main character in Short Night of Glass Dolls is all three! And by doing so the scores bring the audience into a closer relationship with the characters and their inner lives than they otherwise may have had. They most work when there is space given for that music to overwhelm and define the journey of those inexpressive characters as they move through their often spectacular landscapes (Days of Heaven and of course Once Upon A Time In The West).

[domino harvey]

He’s one of the few recipients of the non-honorary “He’s still alive and somehow hasn’t won yet” sympathy Oscar whose win was wholly merited by the specific work awarded. What a tremendous score to go out on!

[black&huge]

Very, very sad news. Among his many great scores though I will say I popped in The Hateful Eight soundtrack a month ago and I think it's one of his best.

[hearthesilence]

La Cinémathèque française re-posted their lengthy 2018 interview with Brian De Palma as a tribute to Morricone, because when he discusses Casualties of War at about 2:20, he breaks down and says he can't listen to the score (adding that the film is too painful for him to watch).

[Reverend Drewcifer]

La Cinémathèque française re-posted their lengthy 2018 interview with Brian De Palma as a tribute to Morricone, because when he discusses Casualties of War at about 2:20, he breaks down and says he can't listen to the score (adding that the film is too painful for him to watch).

It's like watching your dad cry. My dad is also a very difficult man with a nicotine-tortured tenor voice.

[hearthesilence]

It's like watching your dad cry. My dad is also a very difficult man with a nicotine-tortured tenor voice.

Torture? Sweet, sweet cancer-growing nicotine?

[Reverend Drewcifer]

It's like watching your dad cry. My dad is also a very difficult man with a nicotine-tortured tenor voice.

Torture? Sweet, sweet cancer-growing nicotine?

My wife made an off-the-dome calculation that my Troika lighter (20 years old this year) lit ~30,000 camels. She then reminded me of my multiple throat surgeries over the past decade. That said, RIP Maestro Morricone.

[flyonthewall2983]

La Cinémathèque française re-posted their lengthy 2018 interview with Brian De Palma as a tribute to Morricone, because when he discusses Casualties of War at about 2:20, he breaks down and says he can't listen to the score (adding that the film is too painful for him to watch).

On top of the subject matter I'm sure that both the shoot, and the subsequent death of Dawn Steel made it all the more difficult for him to watch.

It's sad that Morricone didn't do more work with DePalma. I have a great affection for the Leone movies, but the first film I thought of after hearing the news was The Untouchables. I said on Letterboxd that Connery better have loaned his Oscar to Ennio for the music which so incredibly enhanced the death scene. The strings and that saxophone really added an emotional charge to an already striking emotional moment.

Hell, I even thought his score for Mission to Mars was magnificent.

[lacritfan]

Still my favorite Morricone piece

[Dylan]

It's sad that Morricone didn't do more work with DePalma. I have a great affection for the Leone movies, but the first film I thought of after hearing the news was The Untouchables.

They reportedly almost worked together a couple more times after Mission to Mars. I recall reading (I think in "Film Score Monthly," many years ago) that Morricone was De Palma's first choice for The Black Dahlia, but if memory serves me correctly a scheduling conflict was the reason that didn't happen (James Horner was then announced as composer for that film, but ultimately Mark Isham composed the music - it's unknown if Horner wrote anything for it before exiting). Around the same time, De Palma was in discussions to helm a sequel to The Untouchables and I recall him mentioning in an interview that he wanted Morricone to come back for that, but that project never got off the ground.

[Mr Sausage]

Still my favorite Morricone piece

I’ve long thought this little heard or talked about piece perhaps the best thing he did, managing to be delicate and sensitive and also lush and bombastic in a classically melodramatic way, and all the better for mixing those two feelings.

[domino harvey]

At the risk of it coming back into my head after it taking so long to leave, this is my favorite

[Professor Wagstaff]

Yes, I always have the vocals from Companeros stuck in my head, and the same with Navajo Joe.

[terabin]

My favorite. Rest in peace, Ennio.

[therewillbeblus]

Yes, I always have the vocals from Companeros stuck in my head, and the same with Navajo Joe.

Those are mine, Conpaneros for his capacity for wildness turned up to 11, and Navajo Joe for being so thunderously dramatic, especially in its repurposed use in Kill Bill vol. 2 which is my favorite musical moment in a Tarantino movie

I used to play Ecstasy of Gold as a kid blasting in my ears on repeat, so for nostalgic reasons that will always be definitive

[colinr0380]

Still my favorite Morricone piece

Beautifully used by Wong Kar-Wai in The Grandmaster recently as well. Whilst I will be forever grateful to Tarantino for getting Morricone his much deserved Oscar, I really wished Morricone had scored a James Gray film as those intimate epics cry out for that kind of emotional intensity on behalf of their characters.

[hearthesilence]

John Zorn's The Big Gundown may be one of my three or four favorite jazz albums from the past 50 years. It's not on Spotify in the U.S. but you can listen to it here. (It really needs to be heard on a stereo system with a good pair of speakers.)

[The Big Gundown] that has fresh, good and intelligent ideas. It is realization on a high level, a work done by a maestro with great science-fantasy and creativity. At times my works have been varied from but it doesn’t change anything because the pieces are still recognizable. My ideas have been realized not in a passive manner, but in an active manner which has recreated and re-invented what I have done previously for films. Many people have done versions of my pieces, but no one has done them like this.

My wife made an off-the-dome calculation that my Troika lighter (20 years old this year) lit ~30,000 camels. She then reminded me of my multiple throat surgeries over the past decade.

Sorry to hear that man - hope you're holding up all right these days.

[GaryC]

The one I picked, and linked to on Facebook, was his opening titles theme for Burn! which you can see and hear here. I watched the film several years ago when Channel 5 (UK) showed it. I'd recorded it and was so struck by the opening credits and the music that I immediately went back to the start before watching the rest of the film.

[ianthemovie]

Those are mine, Conpaneros for his capacity for wildness turned up to 11, and Navajo Joe for being so thunderously dramatic, especially in its repurposed use in Kill Bill vol. 2 which is my favorite musical moment in a Tarantino movie

Also used to memorable and hilarious effect in Alexander Payne's Election, which is where I first heard it.

[Mr Sausage]

At the risk of it coming back into my head after it taking so long to leave, this is my favorite

That was in my head all throughout shopping this morning.

Someone posted this one on twitter. I'd never heard it before, but it was aptly described as a "70's funk nightmare." Morricone himself plays trumpet.

[therewillbeblus]

Those are mine, Conpaneros for his capacity for wildness turned up to 11, and Navajo Joe for being so thunderously dramatic, especially in its repurposed use in Kill Bill vol. 2 which is my favorite musical moment in a Tarantino movie

Also used to memorable and hilarious effect in Alexander Payne's Election, which is where I first heard it.

Haha yes, I forgot about that!