Sorry for the serious delay. We had opened a negative parenthesis with Italian cinema and we had missed an important title. We sincerely hope to be forgiven: we have just come out of the vision of "Ennio”, documentary by Giuseppe Tornatore on the life and works of Ennio Morricone. A small masterpiece: perhaps we have seen one of the best cinematographic products of recent times. Perhaps, we have seen one of the most effective, convincing and complete summaries of the history of Italian cinema, and beyond, which contains the best titles of the last 60 years.
We broke up last February with an article on thelatest film by Paolo Sorrentino where we wrote about what we believe are the foundations of the crisis in our film industry. We are still largely convinced of this and the lack of an Oscar for our productions was proof of this. We wrote about the "trilogy" of the autobiographies of Carlo Verdone, Nanni Moretti and Paolo Sorrentino as a tangible sign of a structural weakness of ideas, imagination, writing and, after seeing "Ennio", we also add musical creativity and now we are further persuaded.
First of all, two words, necessary and dutiful, of tribute to the director of "Ennio": Giuseppe Tornatore and his masterpiece Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. It is a film that marked a turning point and a point of reference for those who love the big screen, above all for the feelings it is able to arouse. In that film (1988), perhaps for the first time, Italian cinema pays homage to itself not only and not so much for what it has produced and realized in its recent history but more for the emotions that "presence" projection is able to arouse in the viewer.
In fact, there are no high-definition televisions or streaming viewing on the comfortable sofa at home that can compare with what happens in the dark of the cinema hall. While watching Ennio, we are not afraid to write that we were moved. Reviewing historical images and passages, fundamental to our cinema, was like returning to our most beautiful youth when we began to frequent the parish hall, when we went to the "arenas" with the whole family, when in Rome at the end of the 70s we spent long hours in the cinema with the magical nights of the Roman Summer.
How can we forget the vision of Napoleon by Abel Gance, projected on three large screens, under the Colosseum and with the 80-piece live orchestra? We were moved when Tornatore reminded us of this documentary Kneeling by you by Gianni Morandi and If phoning by Mina were set to music by Ennio Morricone; we were moved when she played the soundtrack of Sacco and Vanzetti sung by Joan Baez ( ..here's to you Nicola and Bart … Rest forever here in our hearts…); we got upset when we reviewed snippets of Allosanfan of the Taviani Brothers as well as when he recalled the voice of Dulce pontes in the songs of Supports Pereira by Carlo Faenza of 1995 (with a Marcello Mastroianni in one of his last more mature performances). We were thrilled when we saw Bruce Springstein which takes up and proposes the "attacks" of Maestro Ennio in his concerts and, finally, we were moved when, receiving the Oscar, he dedicated it to his wife, his tutelary deity.
These memories, this journey into the past, Tornatore reminds us, are not contained only in the frames or sequences of the great films that his documentary presents to us, but even more takes us back to the heart of musical pieces who accompanied them. To also say that "to accompany" is a limited verb, which fails to completely encompass the meaning of the relationship between images and music. Sergio Leone's films, his global and non-Italian western, might not have been the same without Ennio Morricone's soundtrack. In the documentary he recalls how Leone himself wanted the music to accompany the scenes being filmed to be played during filming. On the set, witnesses recall, that "magic" atmosphere was created which then made possible the birth of the masterpieces we know: the "dollars trilogy" with A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
With this documentary on Ennio Morricone, the perfect synthesis of vision is proposed and realized: images and audio. An "audiovisual product" is largely text, writing, and largely music. Our greatest composer of soundtracks (and others) is in the soul of national cinema with a capital C and, in particular, reviewing the quantity and quality of the films signed by Morricone, one could certainly state that the great Italian cinema is enclosed in the Maestro's music and vice versa. Hopefully, at the end of two years of oblivion in theaters due to Covid, this film seemed to us to be an excellent wish for a new spring for Italian cinema. We hope so because even if it is in crisis for what it is able to produce today, it will never be for what it has achieved in the past. This documentary film by Tornatore can also be seen and appreciated, not to be forgotten, as a small anthology of the "best of" what we have seen, loved and appreciated in the last 50 years of cinema. We all know it's no small matter.
"Ennio" is still being distributed and we strongly advise you to take it easy (it lasts about 3 hours) and see it in theaters, otherwise you will find it available in streaming with different platforms.
