Sergio Leone’s movie “Play Me a Song of Death” with music by Ennio Morricone is a western traditional | EUROtoday

The solar beats down mercilessly on the three shady characters on the practice station. Their brown leather-based coats are lined in mud. The faces look darkly out from below the brims of their hats. A squeaking wind turbine units the tone on this seemingly countless scene.

What is definitely very quiet out of the blue turns into monumentally loud. The buzzing fly. The busy telegraph operator. The drops of water that steadily fall from the ceiling and burst onto the ground like ripe fruit. The practice that’s about to depart offers a transparent view of the anonymous anti-hero of this story. He can solely handle one query from his harmonica-playing lips: “Where’s Frank?”

The opening scene of the movie “Play me a song of death” has change into an iconic second in movie historical past. In his western epic, revealed in 1968, Sergio Leone condenses the motifs of the style and deconstructs the traditional Wild West as a dying fantasy in a modernizing world. The civilization in Leone’s movie is characterised by greed and corruption, and the hero turns into a silent avenger.

With a funds of 5 million {dollars}, the spaghetti western grossed round sixty million {dollars} worldwide (a big quantity for the time) and have become a cult movie, particularly in Europe. For a very long time it was thought of essentially the most profitable western ever, till “Dances with Wolves” (1990), starring Kevin Costner, overtook it on the field workplace.

The success of the movie can also be because of the music by Ennio Morricone, who created a musical leitmotif for every character. The composer and director had already labored collectively on Leone’s “Dollar” trilogy with Clint Eastwood within the lead position.

In “Play Me the Song of Death,” the plaintive soprano voice of the Italian singer Edda Dell’Orso underlines the ache and longing of the previous prostitute Jill, who has married a farmer and needs to begin a brand new life within the city of Flagstone. Incomparably embodied by Italy’s movie diva Claudia Cardinale, Jill finds out upon her arrival that her husband and his household have been murdered by gangster Frank and his gang.

Frank works for the severely in poor health railway entrepreneur Morton, who needs to appreciate his largest dream: a railway line to the Pacific. But an unknown avenger involves city, whose motives are revealed over the course of the movie and culminate within the remaining showdown.

The foremost musical theme of the movie is the unusual harmonica enjoying of the anonymous antihero, paired with a metallic-sounding electrical guitar. Leone is alleged to have insisted on casting Charles Bronson within the position, who achieved his breakthrough in Hollywood, due to his sturdy demeanor.

His opponent Frank is performed by Henry Fonda, who beforehand performed principally righteous characters. Fonda is alleged to have appeared on the primary day of filming carrying brown contact lenses, however Leone instructed him to imitate the gangster together with his metal blue eyes.

In phrases of images, Leone’s movie additionally strikes in an omnipresent symbiosis of two opposites: close to and much. The lengthy photographs present the vastness of Monument Valley and the jagged crimson rocks on the border between Utah and Arizona. The digital camera (Tonino Delli Colli) operates alongside clear strains that mark the “frontier”, i.e. the border between civilization and the wilderness.

But Leone additionally will get very near the faces of his characters. Fonda’s metal blue eyes distinction with Bronson’s inscrutable gaze, whose irises reveal previous occasions.

The German title-giving phrase “Play me the song of death” doesn’t exist within the unique. In English the movie known as “Once Upon a Time in the West”. While in German the main focus is on the anonymous protagonist’s quest for revenge, the English title describes the western movie as an American fairy story. And not with out cause.

The movie is the beginning of Leone’s “America” trilogy. Three movies that cope with completely different American eras, however should not associated to one another by way of content material. The second half, “Death Melody” (1971), offers with the Mexican Civil War, the third movie “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984) offers with organized crime in New York throughout Prohibition. Three portraits of American society.

As befits a western, Leone’s traditional culminates within the remaining showdown, the duel between good and evil. Not carried by phrases, however by the music and the actions of the characters. Like a dance. A recreation that tells the story of the Western with all its rituals. But this additionally makes it clear that civilizational progress will put an finish to the legends of gunslingers and outlaws.