When Tarantino brought Morricone back to western music

In tribute to Ennio Morricone, who passed away last night, we're publishing this article from the special «Tarantino" feature to be published next week in our July issue, written a few days ago.

Le Regard Libre N° 64 - Jonas Follonier

If we accept as a starting point that in great cinema, a film score sums up the essence of the film in question, and that with Tarantino we're dealing with great cinema, then let's allow ourselves to admire together Django Unchained (2012) and The Dirty Eight (2014) in light of Quentin Tarantino's greatest masterstroke: bringing composer Ennio Morricone back to western music after more than thirty years. Story.

Ennio Morricone is the genius composer behind the now cult soundtracks to Sergio Leone's films. This emblematic director of the Italian spaghetti western movement had known Morricone since they were schoolmates. One is inseparable from the other, and the golden age of their collaboration was in the late sixties and early seventies. So, all that was a long time ago, and it turns out that Ennio Morricone hadn't composed music for Western films since They call me Malabar (1981). 2012 sees the release of Django Unchained and in many ways it's the return of an era.

Django Unchained

First, Django Unchained is part of what Tarantino sees as a politico-historical trilogy devoted to the theme of oppression, beginning with Inglourious Basterds (2009) and concluding with The Dirty Eight (2015). Sergio Leone's «Dollar Trilogy» - later named for promotional reasons - is one of the most famous films of the spaghetti western, with music composed by Ennio Morricone. It's even more than that: a large part of the soundtrack to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was composed prior to shooting, and Leone was able to have it performed on set, which had a strong influence on the actors' performance. Or, Django Unchained is a tribute to the spaghetti western, and more specifically to the Django by Sergio Corbucci and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Sergio Leone.

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And when it comes to the soundtrack, which is a mix of covers of film music and previously unreleased tracks, we find two Morricone pieces that were present in the spaghetti western Torrid Sierra (1970) by Don Siegel, the arid The Braying Mule and soothing Sister Sara's Theme, but also a piece from Django by Sergio Corbucci himself, Un Monumento. And what a piece! Solicited by Tarantino for a very important moment in the plot, where contradictory emotions of fear, despair, happiness, satisfaction and pride mingle, Un Monumento is one of Maestro Ennio Morricone's finest compositions, although not one of the best-known in his repertoire. The track features a melody carried by the trumpet, the composer's favorite instrument, and a lyrical flight in which the virtuosity of the female voice marries Tarantino's story perfectly.

But what's most notable, in this context of the spaghetti western's revival, is that Ennio Morricone is back composing for a western film, something he hasn't done for three decades. His contribution is a magnificent song, Ancora which, performed by Elisa Toffoli. Sober in terms of orchestration, the song is largely underpinned by the singer's powerful yet melancholy voice. And it marks the beginning of a collaboration between Tarantino and Morricone, which saw its true fruition with The Dirty Eight, for which Morricone wrote all the original music.

The Dirty Eight

The musical - and therefore cinematographic, we might add - ambience is far less romantic. Not at all, in fact. In fact, it's a tailor-made atmosphere that the composer manages to create for the director: that of a noir western behind closed doors, surrounded by an icy white environment. The main theme is introduced with great fanfare at the film's opening, when the screen shows a crucifix under the snow. Bassoon, strings and brass compose what is not even a melody, but a mournful murmur that fits perfectly with the prologue and heralds the violence to come. The theme is taken up again in various variations.

In 2016, Ennio Morricone won the Oscar for Best Film Score. For Quentin Tarantino, as he explains on the CD cover, the real reward is to have been able to work with his favorite composer. This soundtrack is «the end result of a dream come true.»

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © 2015 The Weinstein Company