Ennio Morricone SW Filmography Guide

[Banjo]

I've got A Fist Goes West aka Buddy Goes West on the Western Quintet set of five Morricone soundtracks and from memory this is a very mixed bag-some good stuff but a lot of bland stuff too- but it does contain a recurring theme i recall that is very similar but inferior to the Nobody title theme!
A Fist Goes West wouldn't make my top Morricone Top 20 i'm afraid!

[Banjo]

While sitting here browsing theres one theme from Run Man Run i 've started humming to myself thats very similar to the Ectasy of Gold(and not far from the Big Gundown corn field chase sequence music either come to think of it!) and i think this is played when Milian is being chased through the snow mountains.So if Nicholai did compose this he's plagiarized Morricone!!!
I'll have to dig out that Run Man Run dvd to see if any of the other themes ring any bells!!

[Banjo]

What serious genre work are you referring to Derringdo?My idea of Morricones more serious scores(pardon my ignorance but i'm lacking on the non-western stuff!) are the OUATIA theme,Jills theme or Beauregards theme from My Name Is Nobody and i don't think there's anything like that in the Mercenary.For me the music's like the visuals,pure class but with a tongue firmly in cheek!!

[dave jenkins]

After watching the film once, I felt compelled to seek out and buy a copy of the score on CD. Therefore: it's essential.

[dave jenkins]

I place this score third in Morricone's work (behind DYS and GBU). I've bought it twice on CD, and if they keep coming out with editions that include additional tracks, I'll buy those as well. Essential.

[dave jenkins]

The only thing I don't like about this movie is its score. It leaves me completely cold. I give it the lowest rating.

[dave jenkins]

The title song is infectious, and although I hate the lyrics ("Let's go killing, comrades") I can't help singing them whenever the tune strays into my head. And it strays in a lot. The soundtrack in its entirety is one of my faves: essential.

[dave jenkins]

My rule is simple: if I feel the need to own the score on CD it must be essential, and I have a copy of Faccia a Faccia.

[dave jenkins]

His greatest score, bar none.

[dave jenkins]

You're kidding, right? This is the best selling soundtrack in history, and for good reason.

[titoli]

This is the best selling soundtrack in history

Sold more than Sound of Music?

[dave jenkins]

One of the hard things about determining the authorship of, for example, a late 16th Century English poem is that Shakespeare on a bad day sounded pretty much like all of his contemporaries on their good days. And when an artist makes a name for himself, everybody in the business starts to imitate what has proved to be popular. This applies to Morricone in the late 60s, and makes attributing a score like the one for Run, Man, Run problematic.

At times the score does sound like Morricone, but not very good Morricone. Does that mean it was written by Morricone on a bad day, or by Nicholai in conscious imitation of the Maestro? Or was there even some kind of collaboration between the two? We may never really know as people's memories are unreliable.

What we can say for certain is that, even if Morricone had a hand in some of the music for the film, he did not compose every note of it. There are several moments in the score when it is clear the music is not by Morricone. An example comes at about 25 minutes into the movie with the introduction of the bandit gang. They ride into town accompanied by music intended to communicate they are bad news. The music serves its purpose, but it is one of the most hackneyed movie music cues ever employed. Not even on a bad day could Morricone have composed that cue.

[Banjo]

Well said Dave Jenkins but i still believe Run Man Run has a wonderful score!

[J B]

I haven't seen that many movies with a Morricone score, (just Leone's plus a few other like The Untouchables and Cinema Paridiso).  However, I would vote "essential" for all of them, and Duck You Sucker is no exception.  The mood of the film really has so much to do with the music.

I'm going to even go as far to say as in my opinion, with every Leone movie, the second most important person involved is always Ennio Morricone.

[Banjo]

I would even go as far to say that Ennio Morricone is the most important person involved in the SW genre as in my opinion dozens of SWs including Leones would not have succeeded so much without his music.