The good – definitely not bad or ugly (1928-2020)
Something changed in movie music in the 1960s. That’s how I remember it anyway.
There was always a strong connection between film and music. As a kid, much of the attraction of seeing movies aimed at my age group was to see and hear pop stars perform their songs. Think Elvis Presley’s movies, studio-manufactured tunes crooned by Frankie and Annette in the Beach Party movies, the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night and Help! Moreover, many major movies were all about the music because they were musicals, usually adapted from Broadway. Even movies not featuring onscreen singers contained music. In fact, generally all of them did—with few exceptions.
I am talking about the film score, as opposed to the soundtrack list of discreet songs. Most movies—certainly Hollywood ones—have featured orchestral music on the soundtrack, generally to set an emotional tone, create a sense of tension, or to inspire excitement. Much of this music has been enjoyable to listen to and was often available to purchase on LPs. At the same time, much of it has always been generic and forgettable outside of the context of the movie it supports. Some movies in the old days did manage to make their orchestral scores memorable, sometimes by appropriating classical composers like Mozart and Vivaldi (Bo Widerberg’s Elvira Madigan) or György Ligeti and Johann and Richard Strauss (Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey).
Ennio Morricone, who died on Monday at the age of 91, put his own lasting mark on film music. He approached the film score as he would pop music in terms of melody and syncopation. It was a work of art in its own right, as well as being an integral part of the film it served. Pick any movie (non-musical) title from the 1940s or 1950s and try to recall any line of music from it. There might be an odd one you can do this with, but mostly you will draw a blank. Now, if you have ever seen Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, merely hearing that title is probably enough to start its distinctive music playing immediately in your head. If not, then you will certainly recognize the music if it is played for you. That particular melody was popularized on pop radio through a version by Hugo Montenegro, and that is the point. Morricone’s music was suitable for deejays to play on the radio.
More to the point, as the cliché goes, his music was virtually a character in the movie. Well, no, it was more than that. In his collaborations with his old school friend Leone, the pair approached their movies almost as they would an opera. Key parts of the music would be written beforehand so it could be played for the actors who would have it in mind during their scenes. Leone would adjust the length of scenes to accommodate the music. The extent of the fusion of cinema and music can be seen in Leone’s 1968 masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West. Each main character has his or her own theme. Charles Bronson’s distinctive melody is played on a harmonica, and his character is actually called Harmonica.
While Morricone is closely associated with Leone, he outlived his friend by three decades and did most of his work for other filmmakers. Much sought-after, for most of his life he refused to travel for work, but that did not limit his output for some half-thousand films. The titles range from El Greco, The Battle of Algiers, Guns for San Sebastian and Teorema in the 1960s to Two Mules for Sister Sara, Sacco & Vanzetti, The Decameron, A Fistful of Dynamite, The Canterbury Tales, The Serpent, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Days of Heaven, La Cage aux Folles and Luna in the 1970s; The Thing, White Dog, Red Sonja, The Untouchables, Frantic, Cinema Paradiso, Casualties of War and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! in the 1980s; Bugsy, In the Line of Fire, Wolf, Love Affair, U Turn, Lolita and Bulworth in the 1990s; and Canone inverso – making love, Mission to Mars and Ripley’s Game at the dawn of the 21st century.
Two of Morricone’s best regarded and most beloved scores were for Leone’s final feature, Once Upon a Time in America, and Roland Joffé’s The Mission. The sheer quality of music in those films—not to mention many others—is Exhibit A why so many of us do not take the Academy Awards seriously, since neither won the Oscar it deserved. Indeed, there was nearly a riot in the auditorium when Herbie Hancock’s score for ’Round Midnight beat The Mission. Once Upon a Time in America wasn’t even nominated thanks to a studio oversight. After five nominations and no wins, the Academy corrected its slight in the usual way by giving him an honorary award in 2007. Then nine years later, didn’t he finally and belatedly win one in his own right for, of all things, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. Go figure.
Despite his longtime aversion to travel, Morricone did a fair amount of touring and performing in live concerts in recent years. For a while it seemed as though he was in Dublin nearly every year or so. So often that I more or less took it for granted that I would get to see him in person sometime. On Monday the always-funny Irish satirical newspaper website Waterford Whispers News ran the headline “Local Man Regrets Missing Ennio Morricone in Concert 23 Times.” It could have been written about me.
The composer is now gone, but thank God his music is immortal.
-S.L., 10 July 2020
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