RIP Ennio
Nov 10, 1928 - July 6, 2020
A life lived, and lived long.
Today requires two songs to illustrate a point about the complexity of Morricone’s musical language. Having scored something like 400 films, it’s unlikely that there was another film composer of his magnitude. When I started really digging into the world of Italian soundtracks, I came across so many wild and lesser known ones of his, like the score for Grazie Zie, an obscure psychosexual drama. Take the title track, Guerra E Brace, Pollo E Brace. It’s stripped down, militant and raw, and with it’s strange vocals, it taunts the listener. There’s a moment around the 2:05 mark where the drummer skips a stroke, and then the whole piece glides on a bit of and uplifting note for about twenty seconds, before sinking back into its attack. I’ve always wondered if that was intentional, or if there was just a rush to get the take (again, at 400 scores, some are definitely less masterful than others; in fact in his 60s period you can hear him treading on common ground a bit). I’d like to think that il maestro understood this moment fluidly though.
My other favourite piece of his is from another obscure title, The Blue-Eyed Bandit, starring Franco Nero. The film itself is less great than the score, and remains most notable to me for delivering the plot twist to Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects almost two decades later (something I’ve never seen mentioned, which shows you how obscure this movie is). The Blue Eyed Bandit is a slow movie, not quite a burn building tension, but mostly just clunky with a bit of a payoff at the end, the inevitability that crime is a game of luck.
There’s two reasons to watch it if you can. Nero in his heyday and Morricone delivering a sublime accompaniment. Listen to the main theme, Citta Viva 1. Jazzy, skittering piano building to a momentous crescendo of a horn arrangement. Beautifully wide recording. An amazing and economic 2:38. For me, this is a show-off piece. It feels like a challenge, as if Morricone’s peeling you off a the top bills in his wallet, and flicking them at you like it’s no big deal for him, and you realize they’re all hundreds. “No, it’s nothing, really, it’s what I do”.
So, rest well, il Maestro and thank you.