Ennio Morricone - His 10 Best Soundtracks

2023 Author: Sheila Hailey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 11:17

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Ennio Morricone has shaped film music like no other since the 1960s and made a significant contribution to establishing the soundtrack as an art form and placing it in the world's charts. The maestro has often taken unfamiliar and new paths and brought the film world closer to rare instruments, such as a Jew's harp. His influence on contemporary pop music should not be underestimated either. Metallica's hard rockers, for example, opened numerous of their concerts with Morricone's composition "The Ecstasy of Gold", which can be heard on their live album "S&M".

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"Mission" (1986, directed by Roland Joffé) - 10th place

In 1986, the Roman-born Ennio Morricone had long ago arrived in Hollywood and contributed an elegiac soundtrack to Roland Joffé 's epic hosting drama “Mission”. For this, the composer won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for the second time based on his score for Terrence Malick's "In the glow of the south", but was not awarded the award. Nevertheless, from today's point of view, the film is remembered mainly thanks to Robert De Niro's acting performance, which is always worth seeing, but also because of the excellent musical background, in particular the song "Gabriels Oboe" performed by Jeremy Irons in his role of a Catholic priest stands out.

"Mission" tells the story of a slave trader (Robert De Niro) in the South American jungle in 1750 who killed his half-brother and then, out of personal repentance, joined a Jesuit order to work off his guilt there. The visually stunning drama won the Golden Palm of Cannes and received an Oscar nomination for Best Film of 1987.

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"The Untouchables" (1987, directed by Brian De Palma) 9th place

Another Oscar nomination was awarded to Ennio Morricone for his soundtrack to Brian De Palma's thriller "The Untouchables". The story is told of the prophylactic agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner), who has made it his life's work to arrest the legendary gangster boss Al Capone (Robert DeNiro), even if he can only convict him for tax evasion. Together with the police officer Malone (Sean Connery), the accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) and the police candidate George Stone (Andy Garcia) investigator Ness soon forms a conspiratorial community that more than lives up to the title of the film.

The heroic, incorruptible receive a dignified musical accompaniment from Ennio Morricone with a solemn theme, played with a large orchestra and all the trimmings of strings, brass and timpani that a large orchestra can provide. Unfortunately, this time it wasn't enough for an Oscar either, but Sean Connery received the only Academy Award of his career for "The Untouchables".

"The incorruptible" as DVD / Blu-ray on Amazon

"Once Upon a Time in America" (1984, directed by Sergio Leone): 8th place

The name Ennio Morricone is often mentioned in the same breath as Sergio Leone, the master of elegiac cinema and slow motion recording. This is of course not surprising, after all, both artists once celebrated their breakthrough with the Italowestern "For a Fistful of Dollars". Since then Morricone has written the music for all Leone films and the Italian director used the power of these very special soundtracks like no other filmmaker of his time and thus also inspired Quentin Tarantino's cinema in the long term.

Of course, Ennio Morricone also provided the soundtrack for the last film by the master director, who died in 1989, and composed an elegiac score that perfectly underpins the epic gangster ballad "It was once in America", which was slowed down to 251 minutes. The story is told about the rise and fall of several generations of a gangster dynasty that extends from the 1920s to the 1960s. Flopped wrongly in the cinema at the time, it is definitely worth rediscovering the film with Robert De Niro, of course, in this case too, largely because of the superb soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

"Once Upon a Time in America" as DVD / Blu-ray on Amazon

"Sacco and Vanzetti" (1970, directed by Giuliano Montaldo) - 7th place

No list without an insider tip and so we now turn our attention to an Italian political thriller, which unfortunately has long been forgotten in this country. "Sacco and Vanzetti" tells the true story of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, workers who immigrated from Italy to the United States, who were wrongly accused of murder as members of a workers' society and finally executed in Massachusetts in 1927. At the time, the process, which was considered politically motivated, led to mass protests, and it was only decades later that the two men were rehabilitated by the US judiciary. In Giuliano Montaldo 's biopic play Gian Maria Volonte and Riccardo Cucciollathe roles of the two political activists, for the soundtrack Ennio Morricone teamed up with the famous folk singer Joan Baez.

Although the film may only be known to a few fans of Italian political cinema today, the pop songs from "Sacco and Vanzetti" are still enjoying a certain popularity. This is partly because "Here's to You" also became a veritable hit for Joan Baez, and partly because the Grand Dame of Folk still regularly performs the song in her live repertoire to this day. A rather rare collaboration by Morricones and an equally unusual excursion by the maestro into the world of pop music make for another highlight in the never-ending career of the never-tiring composer.

"Sacco and Vanzetti" as DVD / Blu-ray on Amazon

“Corpses pave his way” (1968, directed by Sergio Corbucci) - 6th place

At the height of the short-lived Italowestern genre, this abysmally pessimistic and dark Snow West was created by "Django" director Sergio Corbucci and was not only the highlight of his career, but also a milestone of the Western itself. French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a silent gunslinger who, in “Corpses paving his way”, helps the suffering residents of a barren mountain region who have become thieves out of necessity and are now exposed to the brutality of unscrupulous bounty hunters.

Klaus Kinski, as an insane sadist Loco, delivers a scary, intense performance and Ennio Morricone provides the Schauermär with a finely plucked melody that is reminiscent of one of the ubiquitous snowflakes and thus forms a congenial contrast to the immense hardness of the film worth seeing.

"Corpses pave his way" as DVD / Blu-ray on Amazon

"My name is Nobody" (1973, directed by Tonino Valerii) - 5th place

When the Italian West passed its zenith, European cinemas were showered with a never ending series of comedies. The spearhead of the genre parodies was the beating duo Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, who were able to celebrate enormous success at the box office with films such as “Four Fists for a Hallelujah”. In 1973, "My Name is Nobody", based on an idea by genre pope Sergio Leone, was a far more subtle and sophisticated western comedy that, in addition to a few successful gags, not only functions as a parody, but also as a wistful song on the genre.

Ennio Morricone skilfully picks up on the moderately quiet humor of the film in his soundtrack and delivers, among other things, an exhilarating title melody that fits Terence Hill alias Nobody perfectly and wonderfully captures the mood of the entire film. It tells the story of the young gunslinger Nobody, who wants to duel with his aging role model Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda) to give him a worthy finish. In the following years, the entire genre of the Italian Western made a departure, so that Ennio Morricone had to turn more and more to other genres.

"My name is Nobody" as DVD / Blu-ray on Amazon

"The Professional" (1981, directed by Georges Lautner) - 4th place

Long after Jean Paul Belmondo abdicated as the star of the French Nouvelle Vague, he made a name for himself as the hero of numerous action films and comedies, which were mostly tailored to the taste of a mass audience. In 1981, the action thriller "The Professional" was a prime example of Belmondo's laconic, daring screen appearances of that time, and Ennio Morricone delivered an iconic soundtrack, to which Bébel shot his way through Paris as an avenger. The title song "Chi Mai" became a charter success and is still covered by numerous artists of different music styles.

After being dropped by his own government by French secret agent Josselin Beaumont (Belmondo), he ends up in a labor camp and returns home after his outbreak to hold his old clients accountable. What sounds like a rather clumsy story was staged by director Georges Lautner as a melancholic action ballad, to whose success the musical background Morricon contributed significantly.

"The professional" as DVD / Blu-ray on Amazon

"For a Fistful of Dollars" (1964, directed by Sergio Leone) - 3rd place

It all started with this film and its whistled melody in 1964: The classic Hollywood western was in the midst of the crisis and with the low-budget production "For a Fistful of Dollars", a dirty, original version of the genre was created in Italy, in which there were no heroes gave and blurred the lines between good and evil. Not only Clint Eastwood, then only known as a series cowboy from "Rawhide", made his breakthrough in this remake of Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo", but also director Sergio Leone and his composer Ennio Morricone, who was still behind the pseudonym Dan Savio at the time hid.

It tells the story of two gangs, which are hostile to one another and are played against each other by a stranger. However, the reinvention of the western hero as a lonely mercenary, who leaves the previous moral code of the Hollywood Western behind, is much more style-defining. In terms of film design, too, “For a Fistful of Dollars” differed enormously from all other Westerns known to date, due to the extreme close-ups, but also due to a soundtrack that sounded completely different with whip picks and electric guitars than the elegiac scores from Hollywood.

"For a handful of dollars" on DVD / Blu-ray on Amazon

"Two glorious scoundrels" (1966, directed by Sergio Leone) - 2nd place

With this almost three-hour epic, Sergio Leone ended his "dollar trilogy" with Clint Eastwood and created a milestone in the genre, which is often ridiculed as spaghetti western. The focus is on the battle of three gunslingers for a gold treasure, but it is not necessarily the story of "Two glorious scoundrels" that makes the film so unique to this day. Leone's slow-motion staging, the never-ending close-ups of narrowed eyes and last but not least the captivating soundtrack are the real highlights of this not so poor Western opera.

Quentin Tarantino often referred to "Two Glorious Scoundrels" as one of his favorite films and eventually not only quoted its aesthetics in "Django Unchained", but also interwoven some new and old pieces by Ennio Morricone in his own genre contribution, which was written more than forty years later.

"Two glorious scoundrels" on DVD / Blu-ray on Amazon

"Play me the song of death" (1968, directed by Sergio Leone) - 1st place

The ultimate Western opera par excellence with the ultimate of all soundtracks: "Play the song of death to me" is both the culmination and the end of the genre and a legend says that different melodies for the protagonists such as Charles Bronson or Henry Fonda were created before the director Sergio Leone then staged his characters around their signature tunes. That says everything about the importance of Ennio Morricone's music in Sergio Leone's films and so the soundtrack is in no way less a classic than the entire film itself.

Charles Bronson replaces Clint Eastwood in the role of the silent gunslinger and Claudia Cardinale plays the widow of a farmer who, together with his children, fell victim to a murder attack and forms the core of the revenge story, to which the wide-screen images of the romantic Hollywood Western with the extravagances of the bloody Italowestern merge in a unique and unprecedented way.

"Play me the song of death" as DVD / Blu-ray on Amazon

So there they were, the ten essential soundtracks by Ennio Morricone, one of the greatest film composers of our time. Thanks to his total work of over 500 works, it should be easy to find a missing film. If this happens, please celebrate in the comments on behalf of this homage. Thank you and enjoy listening to numerous soundtrack milestones.