UA concert in tribute to Ennio Morricone is being held at the Accor Arena in Paris on December 6: a clear sign, if needed, that the Italian musician is considered much more than a simple composer of film music . However, it is striking to see that the latter arrives discreetly in the columns of the World. On the occasion of a short paragraph, in this case, on January 21, 1972, devoted to the International Market for Records and Music Publishing (Midem). The name of the musician is mentioned because he received the Midem 1972 trophy there. It is specified that he is the author of many film scores, “whose famous airs ofOnce upon a time in the West, Sacco and Vanzetti and, even closerThe Break. »
It is an understatement to say that with this paragraph The world does not arrive on time and has already missed many trains. Ennio Morricone composed his first film music in 1961. Since the mid-1960s, he has been composing up to twenty-five soundtracks a year, and, if he is the resident composer of Sergio Leone, he also works with Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini or Elio Petri. This silence of the evening news around the Italian musical genius tells both the lack of interest enjoyed by the composers of film music, but also the contempt which still surrounds the spaghetti westernMorricone remaining in the eyes of many the musician of Sergio Leone.
Logically, when the name of Morricone reappears again in the daily newspaper, on April 3, 1972, it is for a criticism ofOnce Upon a Revolution, the fifth film of the Leone-Morricone duo, after For a handful of dollars, And for a few dollars more, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once upon a Time in the West. Five films, therefore, to realize that the music of Morricone appears as a fundamental element of the cinema of Sergio Leone. “A musical accompaniment (by Ennio Morricone), writes the critic Jean de Baroncelli, whose leitmotif harasses us: everything contributes in Once Upon a Revolution to “charm” the spectator, I mean to bewitch him, to provoke his euphoria. »
“The music was written before shooting. So I was able to film with the melodies; it’s easier, it puts the actors but also the technicians in a “favorable state”. Director Sergio Leone in 1984
We then find traces of the composer on January 2, 1984, during an interview on the occasion of the upcoming release ofOnce upon a time in America, presented in May of the same year at the Cannes Film Festival. The article is entitled “Once upon a time there was a certain cinema”, a title that is oh so prescient as Sergio Leone’s latest opus appears to be the manifesto of a cinema that will disappear with the Italian master.
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