STANNO TUTTI BENE Everybody's Fine Rotaesque Morricone #23
This series is inspired by a controversy thread where someone posited the idea that besides THE MISSION and some Sergio Leone westerns Ennio Morricone hasn't written anything great. Rather than making my usual comment that most of Morricone's great scores are from Italy and trying to get Americans to listen to them is like getting them to see movies with subtitles, I decided to take another tact. Since I am at an age where I will only be able to make my case a finite number of times I decided to turn this into a series presenting each great score one at a time, sort of like recordman.
I usually use the English language translation title for these things but I didn't want anybody to confuse this with the American remake with Robert Deniro. This is too an important a score. Once again we have another unique Morricone theme that doesn't sound like anything he had done previously or since. For some reason I've always heard echoes of the Rota style here. Maybe it is because there are quite a number of Felliniesque touches in this film. For me Rota's music always had a certain theatrical flair like vaudeville, the circus or opera. And since Rota and Morricone were a mutual admiration society I thought maybe this might be a conscious choice. Ennio actually once did one of his rare excursions into conducting another composer's score on Rota's "ALLE ORIGINI DELLA MAFIA" mini-series. The story of this film is about Matteo Scuro (Marcello Mastroianni) a retired bureaucrat who is going to take a trip to see his children who he believes are very successful and while doing this he also is seemingly keeping in contact with his wife. Here is Ennio's energetic main theme:
Matteo soons finds out his world has changed and so have his kids. Like his name he is very much in the dark about many things that even his thick glasses can't help him see. The film is about his revelations and drifts between his dream world and reality. This is the second of nine films Morricone has done so far with Giuseppe Tornatore and for those who don't know this is Ennio's equivalent of the Spielberg-Williams relationship. I have no doubt Ennio will continue to do his films until he isn't able to. And for fans you know you are going to get the best work out of Morricone with their teamings. There are no monothematic scores for Tornatore films and this is a shining example. This score veers from the Baroque to the comical, from little waltzes to deep serious interludes and lotsa melodrama all around. The soundtrack release was special too. Cam did a regular CD, COS 001 but also released a special limited version SRC 001. This second one eliminated one short cut "Sfilata Di Moda" 1'38" but included the onstage discussions between Tornatore and Morricone between takes. Cam, of course, was nice enough to include the translations in their booklet for those of us who don't understand Italian. In 1990 this was really unheard of and us fans went for it in a big way. Also back then limited releases stayed around for quite awhile.
Oh yeah, it should be noted that Morricone won the David di Donatello Award (Italian Oscar) in 1991 for best score for this film.
Now as a rule I don't do more than one clip but this time I have to and not for the music. Here is the one and only appearance of Morricone in a film he scored. It is a dream sequence:
This was really helpful, your mentioning Rota that is. Not having seen the film, I have had a lot of problems trying to figure out the style here. I mean, it's obviously Morricone, but it does have diferences. Once you mentioned Nino Rota, a lot fell into place, in my own mind. I still love the score, just trying to figure out where Il Maestro is headed.
This was really helpful, your mentioning Rota that is. Not having seen the film, I have had a lot of problems trying to figure out the style here. I mean, it's obviously Morricone, but it does have diferences. Once you mentioned Nino Rota, a lot fell into place, in my own mind. I still love the score, just trying to figure out where Il Maestro is headed.
It just made sense to me. Not sure how many people even know who Rota is anymore. He was very influential. In fact from the way John Williams talked about him and the recordings he did of his work I have no doubt something like MONSIGNOR is Rota-esque Williams.
The presence of Marcello Mastroianni, the film's sense of nostalgia and the score all touch on, without emulating, the work of Frederico Fellini. Sort of an "after the end" kind of thing.
I loved the score in the film, but find I rarely listen to the score on its own.
This was really helpful, your mentioning Rota that is. Not having seen the film, I have had a lot of problems trying to figure out the style here. I mean, it's obviously Morricone, but it does have diferences. Once you mentioned Nino Rota, a lot fell into place, in my own mind. I still love the score, just trying to figure out where Il Maestro is headed.
It just made sense to me. Not sure how many people even know who Rota is anymore. He was very influential. In fact from the way John Williams talked about him and the recordings he did of his work I have no doubt something like MONSIGNOR is Rota-esque Williams.
In fact when I first heard William's JANE EYRE love theme it almost seemed like a slight emulation of Rota's ROMEO AND JULIET which came a couple years before and was a smash hit that played everywhere.
The cue "Viaggio" is amazing, and "La Salina" is due to the score of "La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo". A classic Morricone for a Tornatore film. And the theme "Sogno" by Andrea is very good.
I had to put my soundtrack on the player today. Gorgeous album for sure. Wish I could find the movie to rent. Listening to the music, I believe Andrea's "Sogno" may be the one piece that really caught my ear. The music is just SO much like Ennio and in fact I didn't realize at first that Andrea had written it.
Rota-esque? Not a description that would have sprung to mind unbidden, but I see where you're coming from. There's a certain circus-like quality to the opening cue that could evoke old Nino.
Although this score is chock-full of catchy melodies, it's one of the simpler pieces that I find most effective: Solo Piu Solo - nothing much seems to happen but by the end of it I feel that my heart's been pulled out of my chest.
This is a score which I purchased amongst a bunch of others several years ago and whilst I recognised it as being significant I think this was more to do with the film being one from the long-running partnership with Giuseppe Tornatore.
But apart from the main theme Viaggio it has never gelled with me. Pleaseant and enjoyable enough but nothing which shouts at me that it's time for another play. Excluding that main theme, it is the Eastern-flavoured Nel tempio which sticks in the mind ... and that is because it is so alien to the rest of the score.
I've just played it to remind myself and admit that I had never thought much about the circus/fairground influences which are clearly there. I shall try not let too much time pass before another play.
I just noticed that my copy of "STANNO TUTTI BENE" (CAM SRC001 with some dialogue) shows strong signs of degradation. My CD-player had problems to play the disc, so I made a test for CD1-, CD2- and CU-errors with my Plextor drive.
The surface of the disc shows just a few small superficial scratches but the disc is almost unusable!
I actually try to extract the remaining data at the best possible quality using Plextools Prof XL. I think its time for an expanded release of the soundtrack by another label.
I wasn't aware of a limited edition dialogue version of this CD before reading this thread, I have the regular release. It's my least listened to of the Tornatore-Morricone collaboration so I should probably re familiarise myself with it soon, and check if the CD still plays!
Slight correction. The link I posted above refers in fact to the limited edition (CAM SRC 001) which actually has 1 track less than the standard issue (CAM 9031 72926-2) but is compensated (depending upon your viewpoint) by extracts of Italian dialogue between Morricone and Tornatore discussing the score.
Of course with this edition, the risk of CD rot might be present.
