A Potpourri of Vestiges Feature
By Murtaza Ali Khan
The legendary master Italian
composer Ennio Morricone is no more. He died in Rome earlier today at the age
of 91. According to the news agency ANSA, Morricone succumbed to the injuries he
had sustained during fall a few days back which had also fractured his thigh
bone. The prolific composer, whose credits include films such as The Battle of Algiers, The Exorcist, Days of
Heaven, Novecento, The Thing, The Mission, The Untouchables, Cinema Paradiso,
and The Hateful Eight (which finally
won him the Academy Award in 2016 other than the honorary Oscar he received in
2007), scored over 500 movies in an illustrious career spanning over seven
decades. Noted American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino famously said of him: “He
is my favorite composer. And I don’t only mean for movies. I mean including
Beethoven, Bach, everybody, Morricone is my favorite.”
While Morricone worked with
some of the greatest filmmakers of all time, it his groundbreaking work with
the master Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone, his former classmate, which gave him
ubiquitous acclaim early on in his career. Evidently, it was Morricone’s music
that opened up new possibilities for Leone’s style of filmmaking with its characteristic
close-ups, breathtaking long-shots, and black humor often backed by quick
bursts of violence. Leone's collaboration with Morricone gave cinema some of
its greatest compositions, as background music no longer remained merely music
in Leone’s films. For, it actually became the soul of the film as Leone would
often structure his film keeping Morricone’s score in his mind. A Fistful of Dollars, the first part of the
‘Dollors Trilogy’, released in Italy in 1964 and was released in America three
years later. It popularized what became known as the Spaghetti Western genre. Interestingly,
for the American releases, Ennio Morricone would often adopt Anglicized
pseudonyms such as Dan Savio and Leo Nichols.
Speaking of the Spaghetti
Western genre, Morricone’s scores for A Fistful
of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The
Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and The
Great Silence are all truly masterful. But, Leone attained a certain
consummation with his score for Leone’s Once
Upon a Time in the West. Morricone's plaintive score is the heart and soul
of the film. The score has shades of melancholy, intrigue, and romance that
become more and more obvious with each passing moment. The music features
leitmotifs (a melodic phrase that accompanies the reappearance of a character)
that relate to each of the main characters (each with their own unique theme
music). But what he achieves with the film’s opening scene is truly remarkable.
Leone’s soundtrack to the opening scene is a symphonic orchestration of
quotidian sounds like that of the dripping water, the clicking of a telegraph,
the buzzing sound of a fly, the screeching sound of a windmill, etc. Morricone
is said to have experienced a symphony being created by the medley of these
distinct sounds and the rest is history.
Morricone would also collaborate
with Leone on his final two films, Duck, You Sucker aka A Fistful of Dyanmite
and Once Upon a Time in America. For the former, Morricone wrote another
mesmerizing score which very much forms the backbone of the movie. The film’s
score is not only poignant but it also oozes with a strong nostalgia which
works perfectly well for the flashback scenes. One needs to watch the film to
truly appreciate how Morricone’s music elevates Leoene’s powerful imagery. Speaking
of their final collaboration, Morricone’s score once again managed to capture
the essence of film. Once Upon a Time in America poignantly explores the themes
of love, lust, friendship, greed, betrayal, and loss of innocence against the
backdrop of the 20th century America. Morricone’s masterful score allowed Leone’s
to completely unleash his cinematic genius on the celluloid unlike never
before, giving the film a rare operatic operatic quality. The credit, however, must
also go to the master Romanian pan flute player Georghe Zamfir for his incredible
work on Cockeye's Song.
While one can go on and on
talking about Morricone’s legendary work, it is important to talk about his
collaboration with Quentin Tarantino that finally won the maestro an Academy
Award. Now, Tarantino had often been using bits of Morricone’s music in several
of his films (with the maestro’s permission of course), but, apparently, the
master composer wasn’t too pleased with how Tarantino would chop and churn his
musical pieces to the needs of his films. However, he agreed to write an
original film score for Tarantino's The
Hateful Eight, for which Morricone went on to win an Academy Award. “When I
got together with him he actually was busy at the time. So he thought he would
only be able to write the theme. Once he started writing that theme he got
inspired and started writing more and more. This movie has a personality that
none of my other movies have. It’s because of the organic personality of that
score which is not only a Western movie score. It’s more like a Horror film
score. And that actually was very appropriate for the movie,” explained
Tarantino.
Given the tremendous scope
of his work and its remarkable influence, Morricone was arguably the greatest
motion picture composer of all time. Perhaps, no compliment does greater
justice to the seminal nature of maestro’s work than the following remarks by
filmmaker Edgar Wright: “He could make an average movie into a must see, a good
movie into art, and a great movie into legend. He hasn't been off my stereo my
entire life. What a legacy of work he leaves behind.”
A version of this article was first published in Transcontinental Times.
Readers, please feel free to share your opinion by leaving your comments. As always your valuable thoughts are highly appreciated!
People who liked this also liked...
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for sharing for valuable opinion. We would be delighted to have you back.