If would be hard to name an artist in any medium who illustrated Flaubert’s famous maxim of creativity better than Ennio Morricone. Morricone, who died in 2020 (at 91), was certainly one of the greatest composers of movie soundtracks who ever lived. But even if you consider him next to his fellow giants, Morricone scaled his own wild peak, inventing his own kind of beauty, his own transcendent cacophony. Yet you would never have guessed it to look at him.
“Ennio,” directed by Guiseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”), is a 156-minute portrait of Morricone built around an extensive interview with the composer. (It also includes comments from a murderers’ row of filmmakers and artists.) The movie opens on a beating metronome, which seems to set the orderly, clockwork rhythm of Morricone’s life. Strolling into his ornately furnished living room, he walks quickly, not like a man of 90, and his voice is light and direct.
“Ennio,” directed by Guiseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”), is a 156-minute portrait of Morricone built around an extensive interview with the composer. (It also includes comments from a murderers’ row of filmmakers and artists.) The movie opens on a beating metronome, which seems to set the orderly, clockwork rhythm of Morricone’s life. Strolling into his ornately furnished living room, he walks quickly, not like a man of 90, and his voice is light and direct.
- 2/9/2024
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
“A director can’t understand the final result from a description. You cannot describe music; it needs to be listened to.” So says Ennio Morricone in one of many talking-head sections that comprise Giuseppe Tornatore’s documentary. But Ennio, as it’s aptly titled, can feel part-documentary, part-video essay, and, yes, part-talking head compilation. It’s 156 minutes, but even the first four hint at its simplicity. A barrage of musicians, producers, and filmmakers spout what the film quickly compresses into glorified soundbites. Morricone was a towering artist. Audiences already knew this. But Tornatore doesn’t fully unpack the composer’s impact; he does more to describe it.
So what else is there to listen to? Per Morricone himself, he wanted to be a doctor, but his father insisted he learn the trumpet. He took classes at the Saint Cecilia Conservatory at age 12 and studied under Goffredo Petrassi, later marrying Maria Travia.
So what else is there to listen to? Per Morricone himself, he wanted to be a doctor, but his father insisted he learn the trumpet. He took classes at the Saint Cecilia Conservatory at age 12 and studied under Goffredo Petrassi, later marrying Maria Travia.
- 2/7/2024
- by Matt Cipolla
- The Film Stage
by Nathaniel R
Confession, dear reader. Two decades of writing about movies later I still feel ill-equipped to write about one of the largest tools in the filmmaking arsenal: scoring. Ennio Morricone once described music as "energy, space, and time" which is a broad and huge and cosmic enough description to explain away how overwhelming a task it is to write about... especially to those of us who are more visually attuned. As you've undoubtedly heard, Morricone, by all accounts of the all time great composers, has passed away at the age of 91 after a fall which hospitalized him. In the course of his spectacular career, which stretches across six decades of cinema, he helped defined an entire genre (the spaghetti western), and composed the scores for over three hundred movies as well as an alarming number of TV shows on the side.
His six Oscar nominations and two Oscars...
Confession, dear reader. Two decades of writing about movies later I still feel ill-equipped to write about one of the largest tools in the filmmaking arsenal: scoring. Ennio Morricone once described music as "energy, space, and time" which is a broad and huge and cosmic enough description to explain away how overwhelming a task it is to write about... especially to those of us who are more visually attuned. As you've undoubtedly heard, Morricone, by all accounts of the all time great composers, has passed away at the age of 91 after a fall which hospitalized him. In the course of his spectacular career, which stretches across six decades of cinema, he helped defined an entire genre (the spaghetti western), and composed the scores for over three hundred movies as well as an alarming number of TV shows on the side.
His six Oscar nominations and two Oscars...
- 7/7/2020
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Ennio Morricone, the Oscar-winning composer of Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” and several high profile Spaghetti Westerns, has passed away at the age of 91. According to the Italian news agency Ansa (via Variety), Morricone died early in the morning on Monday, July 6 in Rome after suffering a fall that caused a hip fracture.
Over his six decades as a film composer, Morricone is best remembered for shaping the sound of the Spaghetti Western genre thanks to his legendary work on the films in Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy,” which include “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), “For a Few Dollars More” (1965), and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966). Morricone and Leone would continue to work together on films such as “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968). Throughout his esteemed career, Morricone collaborated with the likes of Terence Malick (“Days of Heaven”), John Carpenter (“The Thing”), Roman Polanski (“Frantic”), William Friedkin...
Over his six decades as a film composer, Morricone is best remembered for shaping the sound of the Spaghetti Western genre thanks to his legendary work on the films in Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy,” which include “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), “For a Few Dollars More” (1965), and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966). Morricone and Leone would continue to work together on films such as “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968). Throughout his esteemed career, Morricone collaborated with the likes of Terence Malick (“Days of Heaven”), John Carpenter (“The Thing”), Roman Polanski (“Frantic”), William Friedkin...
- 7/6/2020
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
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