VIFF Centre Announces New Composer Film Series “Morricone: Greatest Hits”, March 14-27

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Vancouver, BC | The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) Centre is proud to announce Morricone: Greatest Hits — a film series celebrating one of cinema’s most influential composers, with screenings from March 14th to 27th.

While music has always been integral to the power of cinema, few composers have made a more dramatic impact than Ennio Morricone (1928-2020). The son of a trumpet player who grew up in a working class neighbourhood in Rome, Morricone was an avant-garde composer who found he had an affinity for movies. His scores for Sergio Leone’s 1960s spaghetti westerns revolutionized the form: incorporating electric and Spanish guitar, Jew’s harp, bells, whistles, cracking whips and gunshots, and the human voice, Morricone’s music was galvanizing, ironic, raw… In Leone’s films, it’s never subservient to the images, but triangulated with the actors and the camera (in fact the later films were choreographed to the score).

In this series we pull out half a dozen of Morricone’s most memorable scores from a filmography of more than 400 titles, and we showcase Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore’s loving profile of his friend and collaborator, Ennio.

Films being shown:

Ennio (2021)
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Description: Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore proves the perfect filmmaker to craft this loving tribute to one of the all-time greats: composer Ennio Morricone (1928-2020). Tornatore’s documentary delves into the life and career of the legendary composer, exploring his creative process and profound influence on the cinematic world.

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
Director: Sergio Leone
Description: Morricone’s clamorous score – with its chanting, flamenco guitar, bells, and whistling – encapsulated everything that was exciting and new about Sergio Leone’s revolutionary spaghetti western, its brazen cheek, and style.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Director: Sergio Leone
Description: The third and the best of the so-called ‘Dollars’ trilogy amplifies Leone’s baroque style: crane shots, shock cuts, and Morricone music all vying for attention as three rogues hunt buried gold in a series of triangular variations.

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Director: Sergio Leone
Description: A magnum opus from Sergio Leone, the most operatic of Westerns, with a magnificent, soaring score to match its scale and set the tempo by Ennio Morricone, music that speaks of yearning, loss, and perseverance.

The Mission (1986)
Director: Roland Joffé
Description: Written by Robert Bolt (Lawrence of Arabia; A Man for All Seasons), The Mission is the story of an 18th-century Catholic outpost on the lands of the Guarani people, near the Iguazu Falls. Music is a transcendent force here, and Morricone’s score is inspired.

Days of Heaven (1978)
Director: Terrence Malick
Description: As in Badlands, Malick tells a sensational story – here a love triangle – through the oblique perspective of a child, collateral damage in this tale. In place of melodrama, he gives us cinematic poetry.

The Untouchables (1987)
Director: Brian De Palma
Description: With a screenplay by David Mamet and a magnificent cast (De Niro, Costner, and Connery!), De Palma enjoyed one of his biggest hits with this big-scale, mythic rendering of the Al Capone story, bolstered by one of Morricone’s most stirring scores.

The Great Silence (1968)
Director: Sergio Corbucci
Description: A mute gunfighter, Silenzio (Jean Louis Trintignant) circles the vicious bounty hunter Loco (Klaus Kinski) in the snowy mountains of Utah, in this one of the greatest westerns ever made. Morricone’s music caps an under-seen but unforgettable classic.