enno | An exciting documentary (8/10)

Ennio Morricone dreamed of becoming a doctor, but his father, a musician, directed him to learning the trumpet from childhood. Itinerary of one of the most influential composers of the last six decades.

Marc-Andre Lussier
The Press

Disappeared in 2020, at the age of 91, the famous Italian composer Ennio Morricone is the subject of an excellent documentary, directed by one of the filmmakers with whom he often collaborated, Giuseppe Tornatore. For five years, the director of Cinema Paradiso has collected numerous testimonies (from Quentin Tarantino to Clint Eastwood via all that the Italian musical and artistic scene has personalities) and gathered precious scenes from the archives. Above all, Tornatore was able to talk at length with the man who, for more than six decades, left his indelible mark on the art of music written for the cinema.

In other words, Ennio Morricone, a discreet man by nature, tells his story. And it’s exciting. We will obviously revisit all the greatest feats of arms of an incomparable career: his unforgettable collaboration with Sergio Leone (a classmate in primary school!), The Missiona film which upset him so much that he initially thought he could not compose anything, his ambiguous relationship with Hollywood, which was slow to recognize it, in short, all the milestones of an exceptional career are evoked, enriched with superb extracts visuals and sounds.

That said, what happened in the life of Ennio Morricone before the cinema is just as fascinating: a childhood during which his father, a trumpeter in jazz orchestras, forced his son to follow in his footsteps, a talent for arranger and melodist who revolutionized the world of Italian song in the early 1960s (magnificent excerpts from the time), as well as a moral dilemma that tore this genius apart for years, the elite of the musical world of which he is from (he was one of the most brilliant students of the National Academy of Saint Cecilia in Rome) looking down at the time on this “minor” art that is in his eyes film music…

Launched at the Venice Film Festival last year, Ennio is the subject of a special presentation orchestrated as part of the Return to Italy cycle, the result of a collaboration between the Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal and the Museum’s cinema. Strangely, no North American distributor yet owns the rights to this remarkable film. Let’s hope for movement on this side.

This unique session ofEnniopresented in the original Italian version with French subtitles, takes place on October 4 at 7:30 p.m.

Documentary

Ennio

Giuseppe Tornatore

With Ennio Morricone, Nicola Piovani, Bernardo Bertolucci

2:36
At the Museum cinema

8/10