Now Available on VOD
Ennio Morricone is a musical genius and at long last, the self-titled documentary that’s been hitting film festivals is available to view at home. This composer is well known for Fistful of Dollars and many other classic Westerns, and to list everything else he’s done would be a separate article in itself! His signature would define the sonic landscape of music in this genre still to come, and honestly without him, I doubt we’d have what made the video game Wild Arms the classic that it is.
But there’s more to him than just being a fixture to one type of popular entertainment. He’s versatile, and very few people recognise he’s the man behind the excellent soundtrack to The Untouchables (1987). After watching the documentary simply titled Ennio, casual fans and newcomers will find out about how music shaped much of his life. His youth is quickly recounted, and what matters is that he actually enjoyed what his father set out to define as his career.
And when he’s able to craft tunes that maybe his pops doesn’t like, like composing diddies for comedy sketches, I’m sure he doesn’t care. This talent was in demand. Although he passed away in 2020, he’ll always be remembered because of the impression many people had when they worked with him. They saw him as a perfectionist. From Brian De Palma to Quentin Tarantino, they had nothing buyt praise. Also, I’m sure a parlour game can be made featuring how many degrees Ennio Morricone is separated from that film.
The reason this composer is such a master is that he also understands what the director aims to accomplish with a scene. It’s not just the technical details in how to juxtapose sounds, but also the artistry to make it work with everything else that makes up that moment in cinema magical. I get the feeling he wanted to recreate that live spectacle as a silent film is being projected. I’m sure some of that experience in creating live sounds for radio came into play when it came time to add something extra in movie soundtracks, like recreating the wolf’s cry in the opening track for The Good, Bad and the Ugly.
What’s presented in this documentary is a very intimate look at his process and the best segment is seeing him on stage as a conductor. But even those moments of him at the office, behind his desk, are special too. It’s surprising that he didn’t butt heads with the studio system and what he did was to work within the confines of what the business demanded from him.
As there’s no stone unturned in this look at his life, his catalogue of best works, and the legacy he’s left behind, all any other biographies can offer are more telling details from his closest friends. No fan of cinema should miss checking this documentary by Giuseppe Tornatore out. Although there are times where the content is fairly standard, I felt it not only gave me a deeper understanding about the man, but also I had to pull out my DVDs of the movie he fully orchestrated to watch all over again.
5 Stars out of 5
Ennio Movie Trailer
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