Ennio Morricone And Spaghetti Westerns

Perhaps, Ennio Morricone, would be the first one to mix whistles and animal sounds in his music to give the westerns, their real ‘mood’. I happened to listen to his music when I watch ‘fistful of dollars’ in an old VHS cassette. Then I went to watch more westerns directed by Sergio Leone. Obviously, the first ones were “The good, the bad and the ugly “and “For a few dollars more” –

Morricone’s music has an epical grandeur about them, that really make you forget about the real time and space and it will put you in the screen time of the most violent times of west. Within minutes, you forget about yourself and stand in a desert place of Arizona.It was reported that Morricone scored film soundtracks even before “A Fistful of Dollars” but they went unrecognized. Anyway, his compositions impressed former school mate Sergio Leone who was going to make his first film and they together made history as everybody knows. Ennio scored for eight films that had become top grosser of the world.

By the research I have done with western films, I came to know that there were hundreds of them in the late 60’s and early 70’s after the mammoth success of Sergio Leone’s films. They were produced by Italian studios and featured Italian actors but once shooting gets over, they dubbed them into English for a comparatively large target audience. Enraged by the success of these dirt cheap Italian-dubbed films in United States, US critics collectively launched a propaganda war against them, in which they mocked them by adding a tag on their head - “Spaghetti Westerns”.

Led by the master craftsman ‘Leone’, the genre had made money, loads of money, almost like the treasure in the graveyard of “The good, the bad, and the ugly”. Most of those westerns used Ennio Morricone’s music for their soundtracks because they knew that without that music their films would have been skeletons. The common US audience who are always receptive to innovative ideas developed an immediate liking to these films and they became cult hits. Slowly, they became a part of Hollywood glory and thus, a significant part of American Culture.

Furious ride of triggered horses and the fate of gun slingers come in words in the next post “Death Rides a Horse”. Let me take a walk to that old B movie theatre owned by ‘Uncle jeepee’, the old film crazy, to watch one flop western movie. This afternoon is really hot,So I should avoid walking. It’s better to drive fast!