Daily dose of dope
With “l’affaire Prine” still fresh in memory, I’m sure I’ll be tarred and feathered if the late, great Signore Morricone is not featured today
But of course you can read all the eulogies and notes released that cover his life and tremendous output
So, in true dose fashion, how about something left out in the breathless repetitions of his classic spaghetti westerns, mobster flicks, cinema paradiso, and Tarantino fandom?
Though you can’t blame every article for highlighting how he scooped them all with his own obit: “I, Ennio Morricone, am dead.” !!
Most of the bios and lists I’ve seen posted like to skip straight from the mid-60s Dollars trilogy and Once Upon a Time in the West to the late 70s, or even to the 80s
Hold on, padna!
DDD will not abide by such elision of my beloved era c.1970
That’s when Morricone was demonstrating his mastery of another genre:
The giallo
Giallo is yellow in italian
Mussolini apparently banned the sale of imported pulp fiction, which led to a homegrown italian crime novel industry
The books had yellow covers, hence the genre’s popular name
By the 60s, they were adapted into film versions
Full of murder mysteries, sexpot scandals, and dank drama
I believe Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much from 1963 is generally considered the first true italian giallo film
Morricone scored a bunch of them (he scored a bunch of everything)
My two favorites:
La Lucertola, the theme from A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, from 1971, about a society girl with a dream-but-is-it-a-dream about psycho LSD sex orgies and a murder (this is the kind of title and storyline you’re getting with the gialli!)
Truly freaky woodwinds and keys play against Edda dell’Orso wordless, febrile musings
Harpsichords add that special baroque touch
And today’s dose, Cosa avete fatto a Solange?, one year later
As you can see from the cover, another dark slasher full of paranoia and sexploitation
The gialli are always covered with blood and naked bodies
Strings, voice, and repeating piano descent are just too cold
Havoc and Preemo have both made good use of it
Clearly, you could do a daily dose of Ennio for years and the only limiting factor would be your musical veins
That’s me making up for Android’s lack of reaction-mojis
Grazie, Maestro