WTI Magazine #76 2016 February 15
Author : Edoardo Peretti Translation by:
The extraordinary "The Hateful Eight" by Quentin Tarantino was quite ignored by the Academy: despite being one of the best movies of the Italian American director, it got only three nominations, none of them in the main categories. Among these three, however, there is the nomination for the best music (original score), created by the immense Ennio Morricone. The eighty-six Morricone is one of the most important authors of soundtracks in film history, probably the greatest still active.
Many of his melodies, in addition to strengthening the movie they belong to, have become famous and instantly recognizable even regardless of the film, which is quite rare for a soundtrack. For example, let's just think about the sweetness of the female voice in "Once upon a time in the west", or the solo clarinet of "Mission", able to enter into the history of music and in the collective imagination: something quite rare in the movie soundtracks business.
Born in Rome in 1928, in a family whose origins were in Ciociaria, a part of Lazio region, he graduated from the Conservatory Santa Cecilia as a trumpet player, also studying band instrumentation and composition. His career began in the 50s but had a decisive impulse in the next decade. His first soundtracks were those of two bitter comedies directed by Luciano Salce: "Il Federale" and "La Voglia Matta". But is with the collaboration with Sergio Leone that Ennio Morricone becomes famous: their names are inextricably linked. Truly unforgettable masterpieces are those of the "dollars trilogy": "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), "For a Few Dollars More" (1965), "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966); as well as those of other epic western movies like "Once upon a time in the west" and "Duck, You Sucker!", also known as "A Fistful of Dynamite".
The master of the so-called "spaghetti westerns" was not the only director whose name was linked with Ennio Morricone: through the years there was a constant collaboration with some of the most important Italian authors who debuted and matured in the sixties. From Pier Paolo Pasolini to Bernardo Bertolucci, or Elio Petri: not to forget the marvelous soundtrack of of "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion", Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1971.
Morricone does not merely settle for art films and the most celebrated directors. One of his great merits is indeed to expand his art in various film genres and conceptions. Often in collaboration with another great composer like Bruno Nicolai, in the 70's Morricone writes several soundtracks for detective movies, horror movies and more or less successful thriller, some of which have become cult: Sergio Martino's "Almost human" (1974); the beautiful Aldo Lado's horror "La corta note delle bambole di vetro"; the first movies from Dario Argento and the collaboration with Lucio Fulci.
Beyond the obvious differences between the most successful and memorable soundtracks and the others, Morricone therefore proved extremely at ease both in the purest kind of cinema and in the most intellectual one, every time finding the most suitable music to emphasize the different themes and the various film atmospheres: including comedy, as the soundtrack that accompany and enrich the first movies by Carlo Verdone "Un Sacco bello" e "Bianco, rosso e verdone".
Around the mid-seventies his fame crossed national borders, arriving first in Europe and then overseas. Morricone became one of the most important authors of soundtracks in the whole world, composing music for works of great directors like Brian De Palma, William Friedkin, John Carpenter, Oliver Stone, Pedro Almodovar, Barry Levinson. Terrence Malick "Days of Heaven" gave him the first Oscar nomination in 1979, which was followed by four others: in 1986 for "Mission" by Roland Joffe, in 1987 for "The Untouchables" by Brian de Palma, in 1992 for Barry Levinson's "Bugsy" and in 2001 "Malena" by Giuseppe Tornatore.
Amazingly, all of these nominations never gave him an Oscar: yet, in 2007 Ennio Morricone received the Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, greeted with a standing ovation and motivated "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music". It was the fourth Italian to win the honorary award given by the Academy for the whole career, joining the two great directors Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni and the great actor Marcello Mastroianni. Visibly moved, the great composer accepted the statuette from the hands of Clint Eastwood, the star of the "dollars trilogy". In the acknowledgments, Morricone declared that the award was for him not a point of arrival, but a starting point from which to continue to improve and contribute the most to the strong link between music and cinema.
His sixth nomination for Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight", for which he has already won the Golden Globe, is a confirmation that his accepting speech was not rhetorical. Among his numerous awards, Ennio Morricone has several Silver Ribbons and David di Donatello, three Golden Globe Awards, five BAFTA (the British "Oscars"), the honorary Grammy Awards, the Leopard of Honour at the festival in Locarno in 1989 and the Golden Lion for Career Achievement by the Venice Film Festival in 1995.
Morricone hasn't just composed music for movies: he also created opera works and "independent" album, collaborating - especially early in his career – also to the arrangements of the songs, including the famous wonderful Mina's "Se telefonando" and Gino Paoli's "Sapore di sale".
Our opinion is that, among all these masterpieces, his best soundtrack is that of one of the absolute best films in cinema history: "Once Upon a Time in America" by Sergio Leone.