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Somewhere between 400 and 500. That’s a lot of film scores for one composer in one lifetime to write, and orchestrate, and store in the memory banks of millions of listeners worldwide.The Italian maestro Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) hardly needed more than a handful of those scores for him to gain entrance to the realm of screen theme immortals. The howling-coyote signature melody for director Sergio Leone’s “The Good, the Bad and Ugly,” parodied to death for nearly 60 years now, would’ve been golden ticket enough.
But what if he had stopped there? Unthinkable! Decades and hundreds more movies, diminished. We wouldn’t have Morricone’s indelible evocations of nostalgia, and loss, and hope, in “Days of Heaven” or “Cinema Paradiso” or “The Mission.”
We wouldn’t have the rest of his collaborations with Leone, including “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Or – maybe my favorite, though I’ll change my mind by tomorrow – Morricone’s rousing sonic portrait of 1930 Chicago for Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables.” The film itself may be factually ridiculous because it cares not about sticking to the historical record. Welcome to the movies! The score creates an aura of myth, from the first notes of the threatening marvel under the opening credits.
This Thursday the Music Box Theatre launches “Cinema Morricone,” sponsored by MUBI. It’s a weeklong, 17-film festival of movies, famous as well as obscure, celebrating the sheer scope and earworm mastery of this composer.
With one foot in the avant-garde and the other in mainstream classicism with a huge dash of pop, Morricone embraced the film medium’s innate capacity for violence (John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” screening March 22 and 27). Also its ability to break, heal and warm hearts on screen and in the audience (Giuseppe Tornatore’s achingly nostalgic “Cinema Paradiso,” March 24 and 25).
The Leone/Clint Eastwood/Morricone “ Man With No Name” trilogy takes its rightful place in the festival, along with “The Untouchables,” and some less venerated titles from the windmills of your mind. “Red Sonja,” for example (March 26-27), the Sandahl Bergman/Arnold Schwarzenegger ode to sword, sorcery and cheese. These are just a few of the titles, and “Cinema Morricone” concludes March 28 with the documentary portrait “Ennio,” directed by his friend, collaborator and “Cinema Paradiso” director Giuseppe Tornatore.
How did one man write so much so memorably, showcasing a pan flute here, an ocarina there, operatic sopranos and harmonicas and whistling (so much whistling!) everywhere? To further my musical smarts a little beyond the level of “it’s cool, therefore I like it,” I talked to Columbia College Chicago’s Kubilay Uner. He directs CCC’s Music Composition for the Screen Master of Fine Arts program. Uner also has composed for movies (“Force of Nature”), theme park rides (Corkscrew Hill at Busch Gardens) and video art installations (he’s in the permanent collection at Los Angeles County Museum of Art).
Q: Here’s a quote from “Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words,” conversations with Alessandro De Rosa, where he’s talking about music’s main function in relation to what’s on the screen. He quotes his friend Gillo Pontecorvo: “My friend used to say that behind every story cinema tells, there is a real story, one that really counts … music must find a way to bring out the value of that hidden story and highlight it.” That’s a really intriguing description of a film composer’s role, don’t you think?
A: I think all film composers can relate to that. There’s something fundamentally useless, most of the time, if you’re just duplicating with music what the film is already doing. Now, there are exceptions. Sometimes you want everybody (executing) the same moves for maximum impact, so the visuals, the storyline, the acting, the editing and the music all push one thing. That’s great for a high-intensity fight scene. But a lot of the time, and what Morricone’s so smart about, is what he’s describing in that quote, which is more prosaically called the subtext. There, the question for the composer becomes: What’s actually happening in the scene? It’s an essential description of what film music is supposed to do. Q: Morricone started as an arranger, and got his first on-screen composing credit for “The Fascist” in 1961. His output is staggering, across six different decades. Do you think he ever felt burned out, or that he’d sold out? A: I don’t think so. I don’t think you can write close to 500 scores with themes of his quality without believing in them. Even in his most accessible film scores, he’s pushing boundaries somewhere, with interesting chord progressions you just don’t hear in other movies.
Q: Until a decade or two ago I didn’t realize Morricone, and other film composers, often composed and sometimes recorded music before a film was actually shot. De Palma, in one interview, talks about “The Untouchables” (March 22 and 26), which is a score I love. Morricone read the script and met up with De Palma in New York for a few days and talked, and Morricone wrote several versions of four main themes for the picture on that trip. That kind of impressionistic film scoring versus scoring specifically to the director’s images —
A: — It does lead to a different result, obviously. I’m extrapolating, but I wonder if it aids in creating a kind of parallel story, the story underneath the story, that Morricone mentioned in that quote from the book. It’s not a super rare approach; some of the music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Oscar winners for “The Social Network” and Pixar’s “Soul”) I think was written that way. There was some criticism leveled at them from those who believe that isn’t really scoring in the purest sense. But think about the very beginning of music and movies: It was some dude sitting at a piano with a book of classical themes in the public domain, themes sorted by emotion or whatever. Love scene? Boom! Something by Brahms! Chase scene? Boom! Wagner! That’s how it all started, in a way.
It’s hard to know who to root for, Elliot Ness and his G-men or Al Capone and his henchmen, in this still-thrilling potboiler, in which Brian De Palma evokes the twilight years of the Roaring Twenties, which ended in a hail of bullets; the “sweet and lowdown” sybaritic pleasures of the Prohibition era; and 1930s gangster films like Scarface and Little Caesar (with a coy nod to the Odessa Steps montage of Battleship Potemkin). David Mamet’s script still crackles, Sean Connery, even in formidable company, reminds us why he is a bona fide movie star (and won an Oscar for his trouble), and Ennio Morricone’s score, counterpointed with Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” and the Pagliacci aria “Vesti la Giubba,” gives the film a propulsive energy.
When I was young, my brother and I were introduced to many films by our parents. It was mostly movies from their youth, like The Blues Brothers and the Indiana Jones series. Some of these films you will notice do not exactly feel suitable for child’s viewing. One such film was Brian De Palma’s 1987 crime classic The Untouchables.Right off the bat (pun intended), the film felt distinct with its title sequence, where the long shadows remind one of bars from a prison cell, supported by Ennio Morricone’s tense and foreboding score. Then came the way the film was shot, the God’s eye view overlooking Al Capone now etched into my memory forever. What I remembered most though, was the violence. It was shocking as a child to see a kid get blown up in such a matter-of-fact way in only the second scene of the film. Another memorable scene came in the form of Al Capone bashing one of his subordinates to death with the aforementioned baseball bat. The image of the aftermath, the pool of blood surrounding the dead man’s head stayed with me for a long time, even as my parents covered my eyes during it. As you can understand, the film made quite an impression on me, but even greater in retrospect as it was most likely the work that introduced me to Brian De Palma’s filmography.
The story of The Untouchables is a fairly simple one. There is a basis in fact, though one needs not concern themselves with the history behind the real-life characters since the screenplay, written by famed Chicago playwright David Mamet, is mostly a work of fiction. The Untouchables takes place in Chicago during the year 1930, when Prohibition was in practice and usurped by ruthless gangsters who ruled the city. The person truly in charge was Alphonse “Al” Capone, portrayed by Robert De Niro. Touting himself as an innocent businessman, Capone reigned with terror and violence, a point the film makes very early in on. Assigned to stop him is Treasury Agent Elliot Ness, played by Kevin Costner in a star-making performance. Unlike his bought-out contemporaries, Ness believes in justice and aims to bring Capone down, no matter the costs. However, there is little he can do as a majority of his partners in the police department are in the pocket of Capone himself. That’s when he hatches the plan to form a small unit of handpicked cops, cops who cannot be bought by a cheap bribe, cops who are “untouchable.”
The first to be recruited is veteran Irish cop Jim Malone (Sean Connery in his Oscar-winning performance). Through Malone, Ness learns the “Chicago way,” using the same tactics as the crooks to put them behind bars. The other two recruits are both new to the field in their own way: marksman George Stone (Andy Garcia) proves his worth to the other members, both as an Italian-American and as a dedicated officer of the law. Fellow Treasury agent Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) is formally an accountant, but inexperienced when it comes to field action. However, it’s his knowledge of accounts and bookkeeping that helps bring the most crucial piece of evidence against Capone: income tax evasion.
To me, The Untouchables feels like a perfect storm, a film made by the right people at the right time. By the time he agreed to direct the film, De Palma had almost thirty years of filmmaking experience to guide him, and had mastered the art of visual storytelling, as seen in such brilliant films as Sisters, Carrie, and Blow Out. I think his style brings a freshness to the period gangster film that would otherwise feel rather quaint at this point. For his stab at the genre, De Palma pulls no punches and brings all his cinematic tricks: long takes, unusual camera angles, split diopters, steadicam, POV-shots; all in the name of Hitchcockian levels of suspense.
He also brings a grand, operatic sense of scope to the film that feels at times like a perfect blend between the majesty of David Lean with the American mythology of John Ford. And of course, we cannot discuss The Untouchables and its relationship to classic and foundational cinema without mentioning the train station shootout, an outright salute to the Odessa Step sequence from Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. A superb sequence and a perfect filmmaking lesson in building tension, establishing geography and dramatic payoff, made even more impressive when one realizes it was added fairly late in the production process as a replacement to a more logistically elaborate train chase.
When you look at your resume, you see all of these very iconic characters. What is it like for you as an actor to have those iconic characters on your resume and for that to be what people recognize you for?JOHNSON: For me, I mean, I just have this blessed career, and that people, my fans and the audience out there, tend to follow me into whatever adventure I'm going on. The biggest challenge was to break the stereotype of Sonny Crockett.
To that end, during that time - I'll tell you a story that I don't think I've ever revealed to anyone - I was offered a movie that went on to become a very big movie. The character was a slick-dressing - it was a period piece - but he was a slick-dressing guy, and it was all about the bad guys and the FBI, and all that stuff, and at the time I said, "Okay, I've got to not do this if I want to have a career outside of the slicky boy hero type. I've got to not take this part," even though I know it's going to be pretty good, and I loved the director. He was a friend of mine. It was a Brian De Palma film, I'll give you that much.
I turned it down, and I've struggled with that over the years, but I also think that it was the difference between me being identified forever as Sonny Crockett, even though it was a different film. It's just kind of when you do something that's similar, then you further get yourself put into a box of, "Oh, well this is who he is," and it's a challenging thing. So, I've been very fortunate in that I've been able to play a variety of different characters, and the audience will follow me and go with me everywhere, and honestly, I think it comes down to the training and the preparation.
PERRI NEMIROFF: The line, “It was like he took my voice that day, just when I was about to start finding it,” has crushed me every single time I watch this movie. In an effort to highlight some of the good out there that we need more of, can each of you tell me about someone that you encountered early on in your careers who made you feel supported and respected, and helped you take a positive first step forward when you were first starting out?ANDRE BRAUGHER: I had never done a film before and I didn't know anything about filming. I didn't know what a mark was. I didn't know how to match my actions. I didn't know what a close-up was. This was on Glory, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman really put their arms around my shoulders and led me through the process of how to work with a camera, how to understand how to bring out my performance, how to modulate it for the camera, and I'm forever grateful for that. Our careers have gone in a million different directions and I haven't worked with either one of them since 1989, but they were part of the foundation of my career in film and television. And so, I'm very grateful to them today for what they did in 1989.
PATRICIA CLARKSON: The very first movie I ever did was The Untouchables, with [Brian] De Palma directing, [Robert] De Niro, [and] Kevin Costner. But De Palma was remarkable to me. I'd never been on film. He taught me all about film. He was so loving to me and wonderful. I was broke and he convinced Paramount that Mrs. Ness had to be all through the courtroom even though there was one quick close-up of me and that was it. But I got paid for an extra month, and it saved me! [Laughs] He saved me. And so he was such a mentor. He was my first big film encounter, and I know Brian De Palma, you know, kind of a bad boy and crazy guy in Hollywood, but he was incredible to me, and I'm always thankful for how he really stood up for Mrs. Ness.
Early in your career, you shot second unit on Apocalypse Now. What was most memorable?I was originally brought over because they didn’t have enough footage on the helicopter attack. I did a lot of inserts and then they didn’t have the big formations, so I had to do all the formations. Well, I had been in the Army and shooting training movies, and I shot a training picture on helicopter assault. So I knew technically how the army lays out the formations. There are a whole series of formations. It depends on what kind of assault you’re doing. So from that, I kind of garnered a way to organize the helicopters. We would all take off and we’d do what I used to call the assembly. We’d all get up in the air and we’d fly straight until we got everybody in position. And then we’d make a right hand turn, and that was the rehearsal leg, so we’d do the rehearsal and make sure it was okay. Then we’d do another assembly leg, and then we would do the shooting leg, and we would fly many helicopters in this great big square formation.
You had very successful collaborations with a number of directors including Brian De Palma. What makes for a successful collaboration with a director?
You have to remember, it’s never about you. It’s always about the picture.
[Additionally] it’s important that you always back up the director and never go behind their back. The producer tries to get you to do that. The actors try and get you to do that, and you should have no part of it and just shut it down immediately when it happens, because all that does is sow conflict and it just screws up the picture.
So how did you and Brian work?
We had a very unusual working relationship. We never talked very much. We’re both kind of not talkers. Typically on a movie he would show me what he wants to do. He’d show me the staging and he would say, ‘how long?’ And I’d say ’45 minutes.’ And in about a half hour when I had it all together he would come back in and I would say to him, ‘I changed this and I changed that.’ And he would go ‘fine.’ And if he didn’t like it, he would go, ‘why don’t you do this and this.’ It was a very pyramiding kind of thing; we would just work it out. And it was very sparse communication.
The first time I went in for an interview, he said, ‘let me tell you what I don’t like about cameramen.’ And I said, ‘well, let me tell you what I don’t like about directors.’ I said, ‘I don’t like directors who don’t direct. I don’t get enough money to do my job and the director’s job.’ And he looked at me, he goes, ‘fine, you’re hired’ and walked out the door. That was our first meeting.
He’s a very quiet guy. A very smart guy. Really, really sensitive. My favorite thing with him, was we were doing The Untouchables (1987) and the Capone scenes with Bobby (DeNiro, who played Al Capone). He would do versions because Brian wanted a different kind of scene with Capone to balance the picture out. So we would do a version where they they’d just do a straight version. They’d do one where Capone’s yelling and screaming, and there’d be one where he was quiet. And so they would have this great conversation where you have Brian on one side, Bobby on the other side. It was so much fun to watch them.
Would you tell us about filming the scene in The Untouchables on the steps of the train station?
Originally in the script, the accountant gets on the train and the train takes off and the Untouchables get in a series of cars and chase the train and they finally stop the train. We had a great location for this, and the whole fight was on the train. The train was stopped, people shot through the windows and all of that stuff was going on. But Paramount decided it was too expensive to do, so it had to be replaced.
The first idea that Brian had was to instead do it on steps in front of a hospital [where in the story Eliot Ness’ wife had just had a child]. Brian always likes areas where there is difficulty for the actors to move around, because that retards the action. So you could build up the suspense. But they couldn’t find [the right location].
And so at the train station, we had the big set of steps. It was hard for them to go up and down the steps. And also it’s a confined area and there’s nowhere to escape. So you have two elements going for you, it’s physically hard, and you’re just out in the open, you’re just stuck. You have to slug it out. Then to help retard the action he had the baby carriage and the baby, because that mirrored the father. He had just become a new father. And so he went for the baby.
Enthused, co-host Chris Ryan then adds, "And you've still got your scouting department out there finding Andy Garcias in the fifth round! Watching 8 Million Ways To Die tape and being like, 'I love this guy!'"
A bit later, after some brief discussion of the film's budget and how the filmmakers essentially made a hundred-million dollar movie for about 20-million, Ryan continues: "Not only what a bargain, but also it goes across the board, beyond even the big names that we just mentioned, where, when you watch a movie like this, you're seeing like every single part of what goes into making a movie at its absolute best. Like, the cinematography is great, the outfits are amazing, the production design is amazing. I know that stuff isn't that fun to talk about, but it is kind of like, this is when Hollywood was really Hollywooding. Like they REALLY made... and when you watch it, still to this day - there's some slower parts of it - but ... this is a really really really entertaining movie that just delivers, like, every single time."
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