Ennio (2021)

[Novecento]

It is indeed ?o samba? in Portuguese, which is masculine. But its Brazilian origins are not from Portuguese but from Bantu from Angola?hence the alternative ?semba?. In Spanish, it became feminine as ?la samba?, perhaps more via association with ?la bamba? than simply its ?a? ending (?problema? is masculine after all), and it seems that it more recently went the same way in Italian.

It?s feminine in French too.

In any case, failing to be a language pedant has nothing to do with the topic of the documentary.

[Novecento]

Also, regarding sampling classic works, I recall him explicitly mentioning several cases ? was BACH not one of them? Perhaps it was supposed to be implicit?

[titoli]

Strangely no effort is made, if not implicitly, to uncover the "spark" which led Morricone to develop his style. In 1958 he made some arrangements for Mario Lanza and nothing is said about them, probably because they are quite traditional. It is  true that the first relevant arrangement he made completely unusual was for Gianni Meccia's  IL barattolo (the can) where he used the effect of a can kicked around (I'm not sure a real can was used or some kind of south-american percussion instead) and from there he got the idea of using strange objects and effects with odd applications of regular instruments or voices he had experimented in classical advanced music which came to define his style. And Il barattolo was not the single which saved Italian RCA, as said in the movie. The one who did was Nico Fidenco's Legata ad un granello di sabbia, arranged by the other arranger of the label, Luis Enriquez Bacalov.