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I’m very happy to say I have seen it on the big screen, in Newcastle upon Tyne’s Tyneside Cinema from memory, in around 1980, my first viewing of it. The scene where the young boy comes to the door and sees his dead family, accompanied by Ennio’s death chords, made the hairs on the back of my neck rise, a phenomenon that still occurs every time I watch it.
thank you so much for your very personal and touching coomment! this scene is one of the senes of "the scene" of movie history!
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Posted: |
Nov 20, 2023 - 11:37 AM
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By: |
Morricone
(Member)
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The eighth day of the Ennio Morricone Film Festival brings Lina Wertmuller's debut feature film I BASILISCHI. This film reminds me of I VITELLONI, a film Federico Fellini did at the beginning of his career that many rejected because it was too ordinary and not over-the-top stylized as many of his latter films were. But that film probably was his most personal film showing his home village and his friends and the life that led to his becoming the filmmaker he became. I BASILISCHI (LIZARDS) was the same for Lina Wertmuller. Wertmuller had a non-stop series of award winning box office hits during the 70s including THE SEDUCTION OF MIMI , LOVE AND ANARCHY, SWEPT AWAY, SEVEN BEAUTIES, etc. but began with this remembrance of the town she grew up in Italy. The difference being, of the 4 male protagonists, NONE of them grow and leave the nest. She is the only one who left the village and this story marginalizes, much as AMERICAN GRAFFITI does, the mostly quiet unassuming women in the story.
This is Morricone's 6th of more than 400 feature scores so this is before Morricone was Morricone. A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS hadn't happened yet. And yet he does something very mature for a new composer, he tends to keep out of the way of the film. The endless talks (usually about girls) the young guys have while walking around the village is not accompanied by score emphasizing the emptiness of the place and the fact there is nothing else to do (a la THE LAST PICTURE SHOW). but what little Morricone scores definitely contributes and has ripples into Morricone's career. The film opens with a siesta in this sleepy town that practically everybody participates in. He writes a lullaby, but not one for children but a bittersweet one. The loneliness of the village is brought out by a whistled theme which would be echoed in many a western later. In the one party scene Ennio writes a tango that sounds like the beginnings of the LA CAGE AUX FOLLES theme. And my favorite is a unique comical theme for the one young man who is left behind and starts to feel loneliness and horniness bigtime as he walks around the village and someone female is around every corner. And BTW Morricone could easily concoct the pop songs the young girls have on their radios and record players because he already had arranged AND composed a lot of those by this time. So Morricone, even with minimal scoring, was way ahead of the game in 1963.
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Posted: |
Nov 26, 2023 - 12:28 PM
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By: |
Morricone
(Member)
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The tenth night of the Ennio Morricone Film Festival at the Academy Museum gave us a double bill from his early career. I PUGNI IN TASCA (A FIST IN HIS POCKET) which was director Marco Bellochio's first feature, and TEOREMA, the second of 6 with Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini was problematic for Morricone, their first film together Pasolini asked Ennio to adapt classical pieces for his film, which is how Pasolini worked with composers. Morricone asked him to get someone else, he was a composer not arranger. To his surprise Pier told him to do whatever he wanted and THE HAWKS AND THE SPARROWS (UCCELLACCI E UCCELLINI} was a success. But with their second film Pasolini tried to go back to his natural instincts and use a classical piece so, because he liked the guy, Morricone agreed to adapt certain classical pieces as long as he could change the feel and instrumentation to fit the rest of the score.
I PUGNI IN TASCA was among a dozen films Morricone did for new directors doing their first films. This dark tale is suspenseful and is helped enormously by this giallo-like score with a nightmarish lullaby. A simple early score embellished by quite a few varied passages. It got him a lot of attention just after A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS which, of course, got even more..
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Posted: |
Nov 28, 2023 - 10:53 AM
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By: |
Morricone
(Member)
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The eleventh night of the Ennio Morricone Film Festival has to be my favorite of the bunch INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION because it was the film that totally turned me on to the world of Morricone's music. The film was nominated and then won the Oscar for best foreign film and I couldn't help but think Morricone had a lot to do with it. I hadn't heard a score until then that seemed to push the movie along at crucial moments.
In the 60s the most scathing satire ever to come out was DR, STRANGELOVE which took our fear of nuclear holocaust and asked, not as science fiction, but what would it look like if this really happened. At a certain point in that film you didn't ask IF it was going to happen but how far will this film take you down the rabbit hole. Well, in this day of authoritarianism looming, a satire that takes Trump's conjecture that he could "shoot someone in Time Square and get away with it" seriously and what would that look like, is more relevant than ever. INVESTIGATION was made in 1970 and filmmaker Elio Petri takes a head of homicide who is running for office and goes down this particular rabbit hole pretty far, making this, for me, very close to STRANGELOVE as a relevant dark satire. Special mention to actor Gian Maria Volonte's masterful performance that I simply cannot forget.
Morricone's way of connecting all this was with a throughline of absurdity. Three different themes that all, in different moods, scream out how outrageous things are getting as the movie moves forward. Ennio mentioned how many filmmakers wanted to hire him after this to do the same for their films, including Stanley Kubrick on CLOCKWORK ORANGE.
The second film of the night, by the same director, has Franco Nero playing an artist who thinks he is going mad at A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. Unique in that Morricone scored the entire thing with his improve group "Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza". Even though it is thoroughly abstract (which fits a guy going mad) he has different emphasis on different instruments and voices so it never gets monotonous.
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