Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Ennio Morricone

Spaghetti Western Music for Father’s Day

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with Father’s Day right around the corner, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the spaghetti western. After all, whose Dad doesn’t like spaghetti?

We’ll hear an hour of distinctive scores written for these ultra-cool, hyper-stylized westerns that were originally released in Italy, with their multinational casts heavily dubbed in post-production.

Spaghetti westerns frequently turned the conventions of American westerns on their heads. At any rate, the morality of the traditional western was made much murkier, with antiheroes cast as protagonists, usually motivated by greed and revenge. Especially greed.

As with the American film industry, only more so, when the Italians found something that worked, they went into overdrive, churning out literally dozens of knock-offs and imitations a year, until a given genre had run its financially lucrative course.

To this end, over 600 European westerns were produced between 1960 and 1980. The most influential of these were those directed by Sergio Leone, especially those of the so-called “Dollars” Trilogy – “A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

These, of course, featured then-rising star Clint Eastwood. His co-star in the second and third films was Lee Van Cleef, who in American westerns like “High Noon” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” had bit parts as one of the villain’s henchmen, but became an international superstar as the spaghetti western’s most reliable – and bankable – heavy.

We’ll sample from music for the “Dollars” Trilogy, composed by Ennio Morricone, and the “Sabata” Trilogy (which also starred Van Cleef), composed by Marcello Giombini.

Tell Dad it’s all-you-can-eat. I’ll be piling the plates high with music from spaghetti westerns, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 15, 2018
Rózsa Morricone South America Film Scores

If you are a Miklós Rózsa fan, you’ll want to join me for this week’s “Picture Perfect,” as I dig deep into the archive for two contrasting scores to movies set in South America.

Rózsa, who is probably best remembered for his work on Biblical and historical epics (he won his third Academy Award for “Ben Hur” in 1959) provides a lush symphonic tapestry for “Green Fire” (1954), starring Stewart Granger and Grace Kelly. Rózsa piles on the MGM gloss, for a conflict between love and lust for emeralds in the jungles of Colombia.

Then we’ll hear perhaps Rózsa’s most unusual venture, “Crisis” (1950). “Crisis” starred Cary Grant and Jose Ferrer in the story of a brain surgeon who must weigh ethical considerations when faced with saving the life of a dictator who oppresses the people of an unnamed banana republic. Unusual for a composer who likes to swing for the fences, Rózsa set himself the limitations of writing for solo guitar.

M-G-M must have felt it had scored a major coup when securing famed Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos to supply music for “Green Mansions” (1959). The big screen an adaptation of W.H. Hudson’s novel, set in the rainforests of southeastern Venezuela, starred Audrey Hepburn as Rima the Bird Girl. Unfortunately, the studio deemed what Villa-Lobos produced unusable, since the composer had begun writing based on his impressions of the novel, rather than wait for the completed film. M-G-M house composer Bronislau Kaper was brought in to salvage what he could.

Finally, we’ll turn to one of Ennio Morricone’s best-loved scores – that for “The Mission” (1986). “The Mission” starred Jeremy Irons, as a Jesuit priest who penetrates the South American jungle to convert the native Guarani to Christianity, and Robert DeNiro, as a reformed slave hunter. The lovely and moving “Gabriel’s Oboe” became a recognizable hit, thanks in particular to its use by figure skaters and Aer Lingus.

This is the score for which Morricone believed he should have won the Oscar.

I hope you’ll join me for these South American adventures this week, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

May 18, 2018
European Film Music for Summer Vacation Dreams

The light is shifting. It’s still summer, but the perceptible creep toward shorter days has begun.

That said, with nearly three weeks left in August, there’s still time for a quick European vacation. This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll glance across the pond for an hour of music from foreign films with summer settings.

“A Summer Story,” based on a tale of John Galsworthy, tells of young London lawyer and a farm girl who fall profoundly in love at the turn of last century. Georges Delerue provides the poignant score.

The juxtaposition of “Igmar Bergman” and “comedy” may seem like something of an oxymoron, but the dour Swede’s “Smiles of a Summer Night” proves to be a witty examination of the folly of the human heart. Frequent Bergman collaborator Erik Nordgren wrote the music.

Director Yves Robert adapted the memoirs of Marcel Pagnol, who spent his childhood summers in the south of France, into two lovely films, “My Father’s Glory” and “My Mother’s Castle.” We’ll hear music composed for both by Vladimir Cosma. Pagnol’s experiences in Provence marked him for life, informing the films and writings of his maturity, including “The Baker’s Wife,” and “Jean de Florette.”

Finally, we’ll have a generous sampling from one of Ennio Morricone’s most beloved scores, that for “Cinema Paradiso.” “Cinema Paradiso,” set in a post-war Siciy where it always seems to be summer, is a nostalgic paean to the shared experience of film and the significance it holds in our lives. It won a special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was honored with an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

I hope you’ll join me for summer overseas, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

August 11, 2017
Alessandro Alessandroni R.I.P.

You may have heard him on “Picture Perfect” last Friday, on WWFM – The Classical Network, whistling the distinctive main title music for “A Fistful of Dollars.” Alessandro Alessandroni, whose talent, as a guitarist, mandolinist, sitarist, accordionist, pianist, and, yes, whistler, graced over 70 film scores, died on Sunday at the age of 92. Among his recent credits: “The Lego Movie.” He essentially whistled Ennio Morricone to international fame.

Learn more about Alessandroni here:

http://exclaim.ca/film/article/r_i_p_italian_soundtrack_great_alessandro_alessandroni

R.I.P.

March 30, 2017
Western Heroes The Evolution of the Genre

The American western must be the most adaptable of cinematic genres. As times have changed, so has the western, to reflect the world around it – which seems funny, in a way, since the figures at its core are so resolute.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we reflect on the evolution of the western hero with music from four films.

“Shane” (1953) depicts a classic western archetype, the reluctant gunfighter, a drifter with a past, who pauses on his way to nowhere to defend a family of homesteaders against injustice at the hands of a greedy cattle baron. Mysterious, laconic, but with an unshakeable moral compass, Shane can be counted on always to do the right thing, resorting to violence only when he’s out of options. Alan Ladd’s mythic turn is supported by one of Victor Young’s best-loved scores.

Dimitri Tiomkin was once asked how a composer of Ukrainian origin could write such convincing western music. He responded, in accented English, “A steppe is a steppe is a steppe.”

Tiomkin would become the composer of choice for the American western throughout the 1950s, due to his distinctive handling of “High Noon” (1952). The success of its title song, “The Ballad of High Noon” (otherwise known as “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’”) – with its melody integrated into the orchestral score – provided a western blueprint for well over a decade. Tiomkin was honored with two Academy Awards, for Best Song and Best Scoring of a Dramatic Motion Picture.

In “High Noon,” we are presented with a very different hero from that of the “Shane” archetype, a hero allowed to show uncertainty. Gary Cooper’s Marshal Will Kane seeks help for the final showdown, but winds up having to stand alone. As Mark Twain observed, “Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s acting in spite of that fear.”

Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name, the anti-hero of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” of spaghetti westerns, is very much a product of the 1960s – cynical and self-serving, with his own moral code, lots of grays clouding up the black and white. The character was introduced in 1964’s “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), a western remake of Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo,” with a wandering gun-for-hire standing in for Kurosawa’s ronin, or masterless samurai.

The Man With No Name assumes a mercenary pose, his allegiance shifting with the most profitable wind. However, he is revealed to have his own sense of justice, unorthodox as it may be.

Ennio Morricone brought a fresh sound to this new kind of hero and earned international attention, which would intensify a few years later with his iconic score for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

By the late ‘70s, the western as a genre appeared to be in its death-throes. But never underestimate the durability of a good myth. Even as galloping horses and dusty plains grew increasingly scarce on movie screens, the tropes and iconography of the western endured, transferred to the final frontier of space.

Following the success of “Star Wars,” in 1977, with its cantinas and space cowboys, shoot-‘em-ups and showdowns were, increasingly, set in distant galaxies, though, regrettably, often without much of the former “western” moral gravitas.

“Outland” (1981) is a gritty update of “High Noon,” transferred to a mining colony on one of the moons of Jupiter. This time Sean Connery plays the marshal, like Gary Cooper’s Will Kane, determined to do the right thing, even as he is left to stand alone against hired gunman. The score is by Jerry Goldsmith, who, earlier in his career, had written music for a fair number of true westerns, on both big screen and small.

I hope you’ll join me for four faces of the western hero, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

March 24, 2017

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