THE RANKING
THE RANKING
A touching tribute to the great Ennio Morricone.
Four Empire writers pick their favourite tracks by the legendary composer
Chris: We’re here under very sad circumstances, to talk about Ennio Morricone. But this should be seen as a celebration, because the man was incredible. He’s absolutely in the pantheon of all-time great composers. Isn’t he?
Amon: Absolutely. Along with John Williams and Hans Zimmer for me, he’s on the Mount Rushmore of filmcomposing. He has more scores combined than Zimmer, Williams and John Barry, which is insane.
Chris: He’s got more scores than Mo Salah.
Ian: A lot of it is the breadth of the work, the genres he straddled. There are people who might identify him with Westerns, but there are detective movies and dramas and romances and any kind of genre you want to think of. And he mastered them all. That’s a true genius, isn’t it? He pushed film-scoring on in terms of his use of bizarre instrumentation that nobody else was using at that time. He pushed the art form on.
Helen: I didn’t come at him through his Westerns. That’s never been my home genre, as it were. I came at him through things like The Mission and The Untouchables, and all his work with Giuseppe Tornatore. There was so much romance and lushness and richness in those scores. And he could do these incredibly strippedback, minimalist scores.
Chris: He’s one of those people we all kind of grew up with as well. You didn’t necessarily know the name Ennio Morricone, but you know composers through their melodies, that you sing. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly has voices in there, letting you know you’re meant to be able to do that.
Helen: It’s up there with the Jaws theme in terms of iconicness. Iconicness? Is that a word?
Chris: Iconicity?
Ian: The first soundtrack I bought of his was The Mission. It’s astonishing.
Helen: That’s still my favourite Morricone. I’m going to put my cards on the table right now. ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ is one of the most beautiful pieces of music. The slightly more lush orchestral version of that in the main theme is gorgeous, but I love the boldness of the ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ cue. It still gives me shivers. I’ve heard it
at weddings, which just seems wrong as I don’t think it’s a wedding tune. It was years before I was allowed to see the film.
Chris: I don’t love that film. It’s one of those instances for me where the score elevates the movie and perhaps even supersedes the movie. That happens quite a lot with Morricone.
Amon: I read that he said, “Forget the film, think of the soundtrack record.”
Helen: I read one interview with him where he said he was not a composer that would sit at the piano and come up with a melody. He would write down what was in his head. It came to him fully formed.
Ian: He famously wrote Al Capone’s theme for The Untouchables in the cab, going to meet Brian De Palma. His ‘Theme Of Ali’ in The Battle Of Algiers came from the director just whistling. He thought, “I’ll have that.” It’s such a haunting, beautiful theme.
Amon: Has there been any other composer who’s used whistling better in music?
Chris: George Formby.
Ian: We should shout out Alessandro Alessandrini, who played guitar for him and does the whistling. Lead whistling.
Chris:“you know how to whistle, don’t you, Alessandro?”
Helen: I love that he was kind of thrifty. There was the story that he had a bunch of ideas for The Thing that he hadn’t used, and used some of them for The Hateful Eight.
Amon: To have a recognisable sound, but rarely sound like you’re repeating yourself is a remarkable thing.
Ian: There’s a theme that turns up a lot in his work.
The Battle Of Algiers’ ‘Algeri: 1 November 1954’ is a drum and piano thing, and is almost a cousin of The Untouchables’ ‘The Strength Of The Righteous’ theme.
Chris: He was very good at layering his tunes. He’d often start with a single instrument and gradually introduce different riffs and motifs and instruments, until it becomes this great, big, crashing orchestral thing at the end.
Ian: Often they’re very childlike melodies, aren’t they? They’re very simple and sweet. And then he builds in whipcracks and electric guitars and whistling.
Helen: I listened to ‘Two Mules For Sister Sara’ this week, and he’s literally making donkey noises. I thought that was so silly and clever and fun.
Ian: His music tended to cleave towards the melancholy. There’s a lot of sadness in the tunes, and he’s not afraid of being sentimental. There’s a theme for Eliot Ness’ family in The Untouchables, ‘Ness And His Family’. I have Type 2 diabetes and I can’t listen to that theme.
Chris: I think there’s maybe a little bit of subversion creeping in there. Possibly. But he was very malleable. He could adapt himself to the director. A lot of people assume his The Thing soundtrack is John Carpenter, although it’s way more orchestral than Carpenter ever was. But that soundtrack is the sound of the end of the world, and I love it. Let’s talk about his relationship with Sergio Leone. More often than not, he’d write the music before Leone shot any film. Which blows my mind.
Ian: You get the camera choreographed exactly to the beat of the music.
Amon: ‘Man With A Harmonica’ in Once Upon A Time In The West, the synchronisation between the music and what the scene is doing, is phenomenal. Chris: For my money, Once Upon A Time In The West is the best Western of all time, and I think there’s an argument to be made that that soundtrack is the best Western soundtrack of all time.
Ian: The end theme is so grandiloquent, bold, and terrific. And ‘The Ecstasy Of Gold’ from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, how that works with the pan of Eli Wallach is amazing.
Amon: The build-up of the track and the slowly increasing pace is remarkable.
Helen: It’s like a shorthand for an entire genre. That riff in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly main title is the way you say “Western’’ without saying “Western”.
Chris: Tarantino was the director who made the film that got him his Oscar. But can we say for a second how fucking absurd it is that he only won one competitive Oscar?
Amon: Some of the stuff he wasn’t even nominated for, the people of the Academy need an ear exam. Cinema Paradiso was not nominated. What the hell is going on? He wasn’t nominated for any of the Dollars trilogy, or Once Upon A Time In The West. Or Exorcist II: The Heretic. Helen: He lost for The Mission. Everyone expected it to be
The Mission, because, obviously, it’s The Mission.
Chris: Right, enough squabbling. Let’s vote!
NOT MANY PEOPLE burst onto the scene in the manner of Rosamund Pike, catching the eye with a devilishly devious turn as a Bond-ally-turnedvillain in Die Another Day in 2002. Since then, Pike has shown remarkable versatility and range over the years, turning in a number of eye-catching performances in everything from sci-fi comedies to period dramas. As her latest, Radioactive, is released on disc and digital, we asked her to talk us through several of the best...
MIRANDA FROST DIE ANOTHER DAY
(2002)
An MI6 agent, and paramour of 007, who turns out to have been a wrong’un all along, culminating in a swordfight with Halle Berry’s Jinx.
“I’ve never lost touch with how it felt, and how daunting it was. People of my age now — late thirties, forties — think you, aged 22, are fine. But you’re not. I remember being 22 and exuding that untouchability, but it’s not how you feel at all. You’re still a scared kid. So
I just threw myself into trying to make as much of a real person out of the character as I could. I put loads of heart and soul into the fencing. I had this brilliant fencing instructor called Bob Anderson who really pushed me hard. That gave me backbone, I suppose, for the challenge ahead. And she was a double agent, so that started me off on the course of confounding expectation. I’ve always enjoyed that.”
SAM CHAMBERLAIN THE WORLD’S END
(2013)
An old acquaintance of Gary King’s (Simon Pegg), who becomes embroiled in an epic small-town pub crawl that inadvertently unveils an alien invasion of Earth, and the possible apocalypse. “There’s no-one like Edgar Wright. Whatever weirdness is in his head, he can manifest it on a cinema screen precisely. I loved being part of that world, and I love that I was asked to do it. I really looked up to them in the comedy stakes. My little forays into comedy have been like an education. Like, with An Education, which was a very small part, but seeing it on the page, thinking, ‘I could do something with that.’ I am quite funny, I think. I can be very silly. I need to do more. I’m aware I could do with lightening up.”
AMY DUNNE GONE GIRL
(2014)
An all-american woman, and terrifying sociopath, who plans her disappearance and the humiliation of her feckless husband to the nth degree. Pike was, rightly, nominated for an Oscar.
“The night before I started shooting, I sent an email to Tom Cruise because I couldn’t sleep. I realised that from day one of his career he’d been in that position, shouldering a massive role. I thought, ‘Probably he will understand what the responsibility feels like.’ He heard the cries as real, and he wrote back. The bottom line was, ‘You’re ready for it.’ That role was the chance to explore every part of being a woman. She had so many colours, so many shades, she’s always playing. I felt like every day I was up against my own limitations, and being pushed past them by [director David] Fincher. The sociopathic brain is intensely fascinating because it’s so deft and changeable. It was such an intoxicating feeling to embody that duplicity. It gave you a weird, uncomfortable, vertiginous feeling, almost. It was very unique. It was just colossal.”
ROSALEE QUAID HOSTILES
(2017)
A frontierswoman who, after watching her husband and children massacred, embarks upon a dangerous journey.
“My memories of that role are diving into as close to a physical embodiment of grief as I could find. Where does grief sit in the body? It’s in the weight of the limbs, the tiredness, the lack of appetite. Massive Attack had asked me to do a music video for them called ‘Voodoo In My Blood’. I did this very strange, expressive… well, it’s like a possession, really. Christian Bale and [director] Scott Cooper found that video and that’s why they asked me to be Rosalee. That was the turning point for me in terms of working way more physically, trying to employ a whole-body experience to everything. Hostiles was a very, very profound film, with very sensitive people around. Rosalee stayed with me very strongly.”
MARIE CURIE RADIOACTIVE
(2019)
The groundbreaking scientist who discovered radium, and became a legend.
“I’ve never met anyone who really feels like a legend themselves. However brilliant you are, you’re always failing in some areas of your life. I remember coming back from the Oscars and taking out the nappy bag. There’s nothing more earth-binding than a plastic bag filled with your child’s excrement. And so I found Marie intensely human. She’s complicated and difficult. We wanted it to be an unruly film about an unruly element — radium — and an unruly phenomenon — radioactivity. And it was discovered by a woman who couldn’t be governed. She was everything we’ve come to recognise as genius, really. We’ve always given loads of licence to men to be geniuses, and we’re very sympathetic towards the troubled psyche. But a certain percentage of people found the genius qualities quite hard to take in a woman. I happened to find her intensely sympathetic.” CHRIS HEWITT
RADIOACTIVE IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD