Film composer Luis Bacalov has died. Many of the obituaries I’m seeing lead off with the credit for his Oscar-winning work on “Il Postino;” some prefer to front-load Quentin Tarantino’s repurposing of his music for “Kill Bill” and “Django Unchained.” I prefer to remember Bacalov from the original spaghetti westerns, back in the day when Django was played by Franco Nero. R.I.P.
The man:
http://exclaim.ca/film/article/r_i_p_italian_soundtrack_hero_luis_enriquez_bacalov
His music:
Ennio Morricone was honored earlier this week with a Golden Globe Award for his music to Quentin Tarantino’s ultra-violent mystery-western “The Hateful Eight.” The nominations for this year’s Academy Awards were announced yesterday, and again Morricone is on the ballot.
Though he received an honorary award in 2007 “for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music,” Morricone has never won a competitive Oscar. That could change this year, as I have yet to hear anything that can stand up to Morricone’s persistently sinister, insistently memorable passacaglia of doom.
Hear it for yourself this week on “Picture Perfect,” as I salute Morricone with an hour of his western scores, including his immortal music for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966) and “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968), both written for Sergio Leone, and his whacked out main title for Sergio Corbucci’s “Navajo Joe” (1966).
Tarantino is a magpie filmmaker who draws his inspiration from a variety of B-movie genres, tossing their elements into a blender and then slathering them all over his screenplays, in much the same manner as he pours on the blood and guts during his films’ gratuitous showdowns. He has made no secret of his love for the spaghetti western, and there are moments in “The Hateful Eight” when the ghost of Lee Van Cleef seems to hover over this gathering of bounty hunters, Civil War veterans and outlaws as their patron saint.
Morricone singlehandedly invented the spaghetti western sound over a half century ago, when budgetary constraints caused him to bypass the big orchestral flavor of Hollywood oaters in favor of a psychedelic palette of twangy surfer guitars, whistles, harmonicas, whips, gunshots, jew’s harps, preening trumpets, shrieks and barking male choruses.
Morricone wrote three dozen such scores during a career which encompasses over 500 film and television projects.
Don’t get me wrong, I am happy that John Williams received his 50th Academy Award nomination, for his music to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” He is the most nominated artist alive, and the winner of five competitive Oscars. But at 87 years-old, the Force has been with Morricone for a long time.
I hope you’ll join me as we head out west with Ennio Morricone, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – tonight at 6 ET, with a repeat tomorrow morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.
Am I the only one who found Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” disappointing and gross? As you probably know, I love a good spaghetti western, but “Django” was neither especially good (for the first rate production values) nor very “spaghetti.” The unnecessarily bloody experience kind of dampened my enthusiasm for the forthcoming “The Hateful Eight,” despite that wonderful cast (and Kurt Russell’s absurd period facial hair).
However, I confess my interest has been rekindled, grudgingly, with the announcements that “The Hateful Eight” will be released on 70 mm FILM (as opposed to digital) and – most intriguingly – the film will be scored by the great Ennio Morricone.
Tarantino’s affection for Morricone’s music is evident, as he generally reuses something from the composer’s extensive output somewhere in his films, yet consistently he has been unable to coax an original score from The Master. That is, until now. Can Morricone, who is 86 years-old but still going amazingly strong, really be writing his first western score in 40 years? Even if I don’t see the movie, the soundtrack is definitely going on my wish list.
The genius of Ennio Morricone (for Rose):
This week on “Picture Perfect,” get your Lee Van Cleef on. We’ll have an hour of distinctive scores from spaghetti westerns – westerns originally released in Italy, starring multinational casts, heavily dubbed in post-production.
Spaghetti westerns frequently turned the conventions of American westerns on their head. At any rate, the morality of the conventional 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 new releases of music from the “Dollars” Trilogy, composed by Ennio Morricone, and the “Sabata” Trilogy (which also starred Van Cleef), composed by Marcello Giombini.
Beat the heat with ultra-cool music from spaghetti westerns this week, on “Picture Perfect,” this Friday evening at 6, with a repeat Saturday morning at 6; or listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.
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