When movies and music mesh

Ennio Morricone (Image: wikipedia.org)
Ideally the score of a film should enhance the images on the screen. This isn’t always the case. I was watching A Few Good Men the other night and my son agreed the music was often cheesy and not appropriate for the visuals. At some points I expected Tubbs and Crockett to come walking through the scene.

Though there are certainly many movies with outstanding scores (not “soundtracks”), three that always come to mind are the “Dollars Trilogy” directed by Sergio Leone and scored by the brilliant Italian composer Ennio Morricone. In one segment that comes to mind, Morricone, composer and arranger of more than 500 movie and television scores, wrote and arranged a musical piece so perfectly matched to the visual that one can hardly imagine one without the other. The music alone is so rich, so well conceived and executed that it has been covered live in concert, complete with film excerpt, by the band Metallica, used as a concert closer by the Ramones and recorded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and orchestra leader Hugo Montenegro.

The music in mind comes near the end of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly when the long-searched-for-gold is close at hand. Blondie (Clint Eastwood), who harasses Tuco (Eli Wallach) through the entire film, begins firing cannon shots at him as he rides on a horse. Tuco is thrown from the horse and rolls into a headstone marking the cemetery which holds the gold. Tuco’s subsequent search is the visual accompanying Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold.” Enjoy.


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Hi, I'm Marty Duren

I’m Marty Duren, a freelance writer, content creator, podcaster, and publisher in Nashville, TN. I guess that makes me an entrepreneur-of-all-trades. Formerly a social media strategist at a larger publisher, comms director at a religious nonprofit, and a pastor, Marty Duren Freelance Writing is the new business iteration of a decade-long side-hustle.

I host the Uncommontary Podcast which publishes weekly. Guests range from academics to authors to theologians to activists on subjects related to history, current events, and the impact of evangelicalism on American life. My voice is deep-fried giving rise to being labeled “a country Batman.” Find Uncommontary in your favorite podcast app.

Missional Press publishes books by Christian writers with the goal of impacting people with the good news of Jesus. 

I’m a longtime blogger at Kingdom in the Midst, where, over the course of many years, I’ve written a lot of words.

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