Film review: Ennio: The Maestro a must-see for any self-respecting cinephile
Ennio: The Maestro
★★★★★
Ennio: The Maestro (G) can only be the title of a film about Ennio Morricone, who is arguably the greatest composer in the history of film.
A list of some of the films he has scored — from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly to The Mission, Once Upon a Time in America to Cinema Paradiso — is roughly as long as the number of luminaries who queue up here to pay their respects, among them Quincy Jones, Bernardo Bertolucci, Clint Eastwood, Sergio Leone, Bruce Springsteen and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, who has worked with Morricone on a number of occasions, this is a forensically detailed account of Morricone’s life in music, which begins by taking us all the way back to his first public performances as a trumpet player (standing in for his father, who had fallen ill) in a band entertaining American GIs during WWII.
The seriousness of Morricone’s intent was clear from the beginning, however: a fascination with the counterpoint of Bach, and Bach’s Italian predecessor Girolamo Frescobaldi, led him to study music composition under Goffredo Petrassi, one of Italian music’s most influential composers. Wrestling with the conflict between art and commerce, Morricone pseudonymously debuted his film score talent in a number of Italian westerns (including the wonderfully titled Bullets Don’t Argue) — and the rest, as they say, is history
 An absolute must for any self-respecting cinephile, Ennio: The Maestro is simply superb.
(cinema release)
