Who do you think is as good a composer as Morricone?

[noodles_leone]

While I don't think Trent Reznor usually comes close to all the geniuses mentioned here, I have to admit this particular sequence and it's score made me feel something I had not felt for years in a movie theater:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFhY_v4m3mA&feature=related

... which is a good excuse to put the link for the vocal version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoOJ6Gnzej4

[Senza]

Others who I like are Bill Conti, John Williams, and Hans Zimmer.

[drinkanddestroy]

Morricone is my favorite by far. Some ither film scores i like are A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT by Mark Isham, THE BIG COUNTRY by Jerome Moross, RED RIVER and RIO BRAVO by Dmitri Tiomkin.

[drinkanddestroy]

STAGECOACH also has a great score, and i love military music, so i really like the scored for Ford's CAVALRY TRILOGY and THE HORSE SOLDIERS. Also LEGENDS OF THE FALL by James Horner and PEYTON PLACE

[marmota-b]

Sometimes, silence can be as dramatic as music. I've seen Dreyer's wonderful Jeanne d'Arc without any music, so it was totally silent - and it was harrowing.

Just think about how Ennio uses the silence. He's a master in that, too, not only in music.

Not enough silence is my biggest gripe with contemporary soundtracks. Nobody lets the tension speak for itself these days; the way Morricone's music speaks in Leone's films has much to do with the amount of silence that precedes it in those films.


On a completely different note - I would not compare, it's incomparable, but Mark Knopfler's done some excellent soundtracks. It's rather a pity that he has not done more...

[Alias]

I'd say other composers have, on occasion, come close to that magical Morricone/Leone effect - Bernard Herrmann with Welles and Hitchcock, Vangelis with Blade Runner, Walter Schumann with Night of the Hunter and Anton Karas with The Third Man, to name just a few. But maybe the only comparable outpouring of astonishing musical invention is John Barry's succession of scores for the early 007 films. It's a delight to play a montage of 'gunbarrel' sequences and register each subtle variation on the Bond theme, from Dr No through to Diamonds Are Forever...

[Novecento]

... Anton Karas with The Third Man...

There's a great story behind that one. Some chance encounter Reed had with a man playing a zither...

[Alias]

Yep. The zither was half the film.

Plus Harry Lime's first appearance is an intro worthy of Leone.

[Novecento]

Plus Harry Lime's first appearance is an intro worthy of Leone.

It's such a good movie. One of my all time favorites. I was luck enough to get the Criterion BD before it went completely OOP. It seems that last year Studio Canal released a really good region-free transfer in Europe though.

[Rojo Ramone]

Nino Rota
Popol Vuh
Stelvio Cipriani

ALL just as essential to their films as the Maestro.