VOTD 01/02/2025

 Ennio Morricone: 4 Mosche Di Velluto Grigio (Cinevox)

Purchased used at The Government Center, I think

Seeing as it's the new year, many people have been drawing up their best of/worst of 2024 lists and creating more online chatter. Some of those might be useful eventually, if I'm to hold up my resolution to check out new album releases.

I've hardly seen most of the films making top 10 lists, nor will I have seen most that will undoubtably be nominated for the top Oscar prize this year. I have a sense that it's been a weak year for films. The best film I saw in 2024 was Ennio, the documentary about Ennio Morricone. Imdb.com lists the date on the film as being 2021, I don't know the story of why it was playing at a local theater in 2024. At 2.5 hours, it's a film that amazingly felt too short. Not that there wasn't room for some trimming; of the many talking heads presented, I had no need to hear from Bruce Springsteen, the bassist for The Clash, the guy from Metallica nor the guy from Faith No More. Thankfully, the great majority of those interviewed were those who worked with Morricone directly. If you haven't seen it, I can't recommend it highly enough. 

There's some mention of the three soundtracks Morricone did for early films of Dario Argento, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, The Cat o' Nine Tails, and this, translated to Four flies on Grey Velvet. (The Italians have a way with interesting and evocative titles, no?) Being from 1971, this work falls several years after Morricone's immense success with his Sergio Leone soundtracks, most famously The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. (Another great title, but let's be honest: none of the characters are especially good, all are levels of bad, and varying degrees of ugly.) There was a comment mentioned in documentary, I think made by Dario's father, that Morricone's music sounded alike in all three films. The composer himself insisted he was trying new ideas in each. Did this end the relationship between Ennio and Dario? I don't know. (Assuming I'm recalling all of those details correctly to begin with.) Ennio certainly didn't slow down after this work, and Dario would soon go on to work with his most famous musical collaborators, Goblin/Claudio Simonetti. 

There's a lot of what you'd expect from a 1971 Morricone Giallo score: some sweet Italian pop with wordless vocals by Edda dell'Orso, some instrumental blues-rock, some string tone clusters. The second particularly features some frantic free-jazz drumming. It's not as funky as my favorite, Lizard in a Woman's Skin, but it's still an interesting work. 

I think the only thing you can expect from a Morricone soundtrack of this era is that you don't know what the next thing coming will be, even if many of the tracks and the overall form seem familiar. But then he didn't compose it as a discreet listening experience, but to serve the purposes of the film.