(My tour reviving some good old discussions moves on to OUATIA
)
I'm not gonna choose between the 2 -- I NEVER choose among great works; I am always happy to list my greatest works but hate ranking them against each other
-- but I'll just add a couple of notes on the songs:
-- When I first watched OUATIA and first heard Deborah's Theme (in the haunting scene where Noodles, after returning to Fat Moe's after 35 years, takes a stroll around the place), I said to myself, "that sounds like Jill's Theme!" Well, now I recall (I believe I read it in STDWD) that Morricone was initially reluctant to use Deborah's Theme in OUATIA for fear that it sounded too much like Jill's Theme!
-- what is awesome about Jill's Theme is how you can figure out the movie from that song. It is just amazing. The first time I saw OUATITW, I absolutely hated it (bear in mind that by that time, basiclally the only Westerns I had ever seen were the Dollars films, and in order to properly appreciate OUATITW, you really have to be familiar with the American Western). Anyway, as much as I hated the movie, based on the musical theme, I said to myself, "there is something deeper here that I am not getting. This song is telling me that there is something much more complex that I am not understanding. There is definitely a theme here of something new and big and vast -- a new world."
Of course, since that time, once I read more about OUATITW and watched it many times, of course I love it now. But I still find it incredible how I basically figured out what a movie -- that I didn't like or understand at the time -- was trying to say, all on the basis of a song. When a song without any lyrics can tell you a story -- that is just amazing work by Morricone and Leone
