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Author of hundreds of film scores and twice Oscar winner, Ennio Morricone died Monday morning in Rome. The famous Italian maestro had created more than 500 musics for the cinema, with melodies as legendary as that of the film The good, the bad and the ugly , in 1966. His most memorable composition will undoubtedly remain the haunting tune of harmonica played by Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West, in 1968.
The celebrity had arrived in 1964 with For a handful of dollars by Sergio Leone. His fruitful collaboration with the master of western-spaghetti gives him an international reputation over the films. "When I think of a film, I always start by questioning Ennio ... and especially torturing him. Before writing the history of a film, we can say that I already have tunes in my head because of him" , confided Sergio Leone in 1973, at the microphone of Jacques Ourevitch on Europe 1.
"Westerns represent 10% of my work", recalled Morricone on Europe 1
But Morricone was not confined to the western, and he never lost an opportunity to remember it. "Westerns represent 10% of my work. If everyone thinks I'm a specialist in westerns, then nobody knows very well what I do," he explained in 1987 to Christian Barbier on Europe 1.
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He had, in fact, also composed soundtracks for period films like 1900 or Vatel , comedies such as La cage aux folles and had set committed films to music, such as The working class goes to paradise or The battle of 'Algiers .