ENNIO (2021)

Film composer John Williams, still active at 92, recently had a fitting birthday tribute when the head of Sony Pictures renamed the old M-G-M Culver City Music Building for him, calling Williams filmdom’s GOAT composer.  But is he?  This over-indulgent film biography of Ennio Morricone (1928 - 2020), by CINEMA PARADISO director Giuseppe Tornatore begs to differ.* And largely makes the case, helped by an astounding 532 film composing credits, as long as we confine the argument to post Golden Age Hollywood.  Speed-talked by a host of film pros, some actors but mostly behind the screen directors & fellow composers (look fast or you’ll miss the briefly held on-screen title intros), the film is too long on running time and encomiums, too short on musical analysis (one guy goes into raptures about Morricone using a petal point!) and how throwaway genre crap was used by Morricone to work out new approaches.  Nearly as old and active as Williams when he died in 2020, Morricone only adjusted late in life to his film scores being just as (if not more) important as his formal concert music.  Like Williams in this respect, there’s been little acceptance of their non-film work.  Ignored by the Academy Awards for decades (hard to fathom why everyone puts such an emphasis on Oscars’ fickle ways), Morricone finally got two ‘pity’ awards.  A Lifetime Achievement in 2007 and a competitive statue for THE HATEFUL EIGHT/’15.  (Ironically, beating out John Williams’ on a STAR WARS nomination.)  To this film’s credit, there’s  stunningly sourced excerpts (especially from those hard to remaster early TechniScope Westerns), and the film should help point you in the right direction: those ubiquitous early Westerns truly revolutionary . . . and fun! (not only the Sergio Leone ones), even better, a batch of over-praised, pretentious, big budget sprawls Morricone did from of the mid-‘70s to the mid ‘80s. muddled films with soundtracks from a genius.  (We'll never tell, but you’ll know ‘em when you see the excerpts.)  These two periods show Morricone at his GOATest.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *The indulgence (at 2'36") perhaps not surprising since Tornatore just about owes his career to Morricone, whose ‘madeleine’ of a score for PARADISO turned Tornatore’s wet, sentimental pic into a hit.