I don't mean that to be too whimsical a subject for a memorial post. Because I was not really even familiar with Sergio Leone westerns, let alone any other spaghetti westerns, until recently, my appreciation of the work of Ennio Morricone is a comparatively new part of my cinematic journey. So this will not be a proper "in memoriam" that reflects on the length and breadth of his career.Besides, as my former film teacher said of Morricone's passing on Facebook, "In light of all those whose lives are being cut short for one reason or another, living until the age of 91 seems a lucky feat." Indeed.
So, I won't apologize for my apparent whimsy in describing yet another interesting coincidence in my viewing schedule that relates to Morricone's passing.
It's school holidays here in Australia, and though it remains to be seen if these school holidays will end -- we could be facing another lockdown that might again include home schooling -- for now we are taking advantage of the break in the schedule to be out of town. It's our first time leaving the area since this all began, and though some of the things we'd be doing on our holiday in this coastal town of Lakes Entrance are shut down, at least it's nice to look at some different walls and skylines for six days and five nights.
Of course, soon after we arrived, I checked out the supply of available DVDs in our "holiday house," which numbered only ten -- quite modest compared to our last time out of town.
Only three of those were movies I hadn't yet seen: The kids movie Matilda; the crappy-looking Anthony Hopkins horror movie The Rite, whose interest to me I summed up nearly ten years ago in this brief and dismissive post; and the spaghetti western My Name is Nobody. I thought the latter was directed by Leone, but as it turns out, it was only based on an idea by him, which is enough to get his named splashed all over the front of the DVD case. (The actual director was Tonino Valerii.)
None of these commanded my attention, but as I do like an opportunistic viewing that results from a smaller subset of choices (rather than all the movies available for streaming or digital rental at any given time), I vowed early on in the trip to watch My Name is Nobody. By Sunday night, I had fixed Monday as the night to watch it.
Monday during the day, I heard that Morricone had died. And indeed, as I expected might be the case, when I checked on IMDB, I saw that Morricone had written the music for My Name is Nobody.
Needless to say, I kept my date with Morricone, especially now that he had died. The film is from 1973, the year of my birth, making it somehow all the more appropriate.
I could tell from the music playing over the DVD menu that this was not the Morricone I thought I knew. Then again, given the imposing quantity of his credits, I shouldn't have really thought I knew him at all. He made one of the most recognizable and repurposed ten-second snippets of film score of all time in his The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme -- you know, the part with the whistling, which has scored countless showdowns from Looney Tunes and everywhere else you can think. But there was a lot of Morricone I didn't know, and still don't.
This score features flutes. Yes, flutes! I wouldn't have guessed it, but maybe it's only one of 20 flute-based Morricone scores. I really don't know.
But that song playing over the DVD menu -- very 70s, and almost hippie dippy -- is the theme song for one of two main characters, the Nobody of the title, played by Terence Hill. I wouldn't know Hill if I hadn't watched They Call Me Trinity last year during a friend's weekend-long spaghetti western marathon, where he also plays the title character. He's actually an Italian born as Mario Girotti, though I never would have guessed as he doesn't strike me as having what I consider to be traditional Italian features. I guess if 2020 has taught me anything, it's that I should not be making assumptions about anyone based on their appearance.
Anyway, here he is:
From two movies now of this guy, I can see that he carved out a career playing a bit of a goofball, by western standards, who spends most of his time sleeping and smiling. He doesn't pose the least threat to anybody until they see how quickly he draws his pistol. Even then, he'd still rather subdue someone by humiliating him through repeated slapping or some other type of non-lethal force, then walk away without checking to see if that guy's going to grab a gun and shoot him in the back.
Because the character he always plays seems to be a bit of a dopey innocent, we meet him in My Name is Nobody -- catching a fish with his bare hands and a goofy grin on his face -- through the musical equivalent thereof from Morricone. And though this song, with all its flutes, at first made me laugh when I thought of it as the representative of the composer's career I was going to spend my evening with, I'd be lying if I didn't admit how catchy it was. In fact, I can easily recall it this morning, and it may stay in my head for a while. That may be as much of a compliment to Morricone as I need pay. While some composers make music that may be suitable to the moment, but falls out of your head immediately afterward, Morricone's work really sticks with you.
But just to make sure I got what I'd come for, Morricone also supplies what I thought of as more typical Morricone fare later in the movie, in the climactic scene where 150 men on horseback approach the other hero, Jack Beauregard, played by a 68-year-old Henry Fonda. Here we get the more typical propulsive and epic contours of a Morricone score, including some of the "wah wahs" -- I don't know how to describe them better -- of his TGTBATU theme.
Overall it was a very satisfying two hours spent with Morricone, covering both ends of the spectrum of an immensely talented career.
The movie itself failed to satisfy me in some regards. Although I enjoyed the many whimsical asides -- like when Hill messes with some pursuing baddies in funhouse mirrors, or beats up an opponent by using a spinning cowboy dummy with outstretched arms -- I thought this movie was pretty slack on story. And in fact, for some reason, there was a major discrepancy between the running time listed on the box (96 minutes) and the actual running time (116 minutes). That meant my mind was expecting a story with a more determined pace, so the whole time I felt impatient to get where we were going, assuming for a significant portion that we were going nowhere.
Still, director Tonino Valerii obviously learned a fair amount from his presumed mentor, Leone. (He started out as assistant director on A Fistful of Dollars.) The opening scene creates a similar kind of mood to the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West, where there's almost no dialogue, and noises breaking the silence punctuate the tension. Here, the primary noise is the impossibly loud sound of a razor shaving Fonda's neck, as Fonda has a gun pointed at the barber's crotch to ensure he isn't up to any funny business. The razor is cross cut with footage of a horse being brushed outside by Fonda's would-be assassin.
So yeah, I did end up liking My Name is Nobody in the end, especially after reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia gave me a better appreciation of the story's actual merits, and some of its nuances I may have missed after several glasses of wine. The movie really sticks the ending as well.
Morricone stuck the ending of his career, as it were, composing Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight among others. He was actually working right up until the end, in fact, as there's a film on IMDB that he was scoring (The Canterville Ghost) that is still listed as in pre-production. Who knows how long into his 90s he would have continued working if he hadn't sustained injuries in a fall, which ultimately ended his life.
I'm just thankful I still have so much Ennio Moriccone left to discover -- the more flutes, the better.
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