Once Upon a Time in the West
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Composer: Ennio MorriconeEdition: Music CD
Audio: Italian (Original Language)
Format: Import, Soundtrack
CD Release Date: 2004-04-26
Music Label: RCA Victor Europe
Soundtracks:
- C'era Una Volta Il West (Titoli Di Testa)
- Come Una Sentenza
- Cheyenne
- L'attentato
- Armonica
- La Posada No.1
- La Posada No.2
- La Posada No.3
- Jill
- L'uomo Dell'armonica
- In Una Stanza Con Poca Luce
- Frank
- L'orchestraccia
- Morton
- L'america Di Jill
- L'uomo
- Epilogo
- L'ultimo Rantolo
- Addio A Cheyenna
- C'era Una Volta Il West (Finale)
Music reviews of Once Upon a Time in the West
Music Review: Ennio Morricone's grand musical score for "C'era una volta il West"
Rating: 5 Stars
John Williams gets a lot of the credit for the revival of the motion picture film score, mainly on the strength of his work for "Jaws" and "Star Wars." I can remember reading the linear notes for the double-album of the later which explained how each character had a theme and how Williams wove these all together. That was all impressive, and "Star Wars" is certainly on my list of Top 10 soundtracks of all time, but I saw "Once Upon A Time In The West" a decade earlier and so I know that Ennio Morricone had already done that. For me in the decade of the Sixties the only other comparable film scores for an epic film are what Maurice Jarre did for "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago." Still, I will maintain that no film score in that decade was as important to the story being told as Morricone's score for "C'era una volta il West."
Pertinent Aside: There is much to be said for composers who work with particular directors to great success. This would obviously include John Williams and Steven Spielberg, Maurice Jarre and David Lean, Bernard Hermann and Alfred Hitchcock, and Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone. For that last pair, "C'era una volta il West" represents each at their peak. No wonder this Spaghetti Western is a mythic representation of the Old West.
I am still fascinated by how Morricone employs variations of his themes. The main title theme sounds like a classical composition, with the soaring voices of the Modern Singers of Allessandroni, but then comes back as a simple violin piece for "A Dimly Lit Room." "As a Judgment" uses the fuzz of an electric guitar to establish the movie's "showdown" theme, while "Farewell to Cheyenne" weaves together whistling and the rhythm of a horse clopping along the trail. Morricone strips down the latter to be "The First Tavern." "Man With a Harmonica" has the wailing of the title instrument but with the underlying theme of "As a Judgment" working through it until we finally find out at the point of dying why Harmonica wants Frank dead. But the composer also strips the underlying music down farther in "The Man," while the harmonica becomes totally distorted in "Death Rattle." Morricone even anticipates the "Star Wars" music for the Cantina band with his old "Bad Orchestra."
Of course, now that I have listened to the score again I have to follow up by watching the movie, which remains my favorite western (and the first classic in the genre I actually got to see in a movie theater as opposed to discovering on television decades later). But I have to do that because ultimately it is a grave disservice to divorce the soundtrack from the movie, because there are so many key sequences where Morricone's music replaces the dialogue. This is especially true of the climatic duel between Harmonica (Charles Bronson) and Frank (Henry Fonda), and the entire end title sequence where Jill (Claudia Cardinale) brings out the water to the men working on the railroad. In fact, I think I can make a very good case that no other film score in movie history is as important to the story and as prominent in the overall equation of the film as what Morricone composed for "C'era una volta il West."
Of course, you can only come to this score through the film, and once you have seen the film there is no need to convince you of either the effectiveness or the importance of this score. Finally, I want to contend what we have here is the best film score not to be nominated for an Oscar and in case you were wondering the best film score to be nominated but not win is Randy Newman's one for "The Natural." Both are among the film scores nominated for consideration in the American Film Institute's 100 Years of Film Scores (which is, apparently, simply going to be a concert at the Hollywood Bowl on September 23, 2005 and not a list like AFI has put out for the Top 100 Movies, Songs, Quotes, etc. Morricone's scores for "The Mission," "Once Upon a Time in America," and "The Untouchables" have been nominated as well, but this one is still the best of the bunch by far.
Description of Once Upon a Time in the West
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