Five years of filming (between 2015 and 2020) and nearly 70 interviews will have been necessary for the Italian director for this documentary entitled Ennio. And among the eminent people interviewed, Ennio Morricone himself, the common theme of the film, which first returns to his childhood in the Trastevere district of Rome, his training as a trumpeter, like his father. He dreamed of classical music, but could not make a living from it and turned to arrangements, for RAI or the variety stars of the time, like Gianni Morandi, interviewed in the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGzw1fMj180
In 1961, then aged 33, Ennio Morricone signed his first soundtrack for a film, the first of a very long series, more than 500 film or series scores, and composed for Bertolucci, Pasolini, Argento, Bellocchio… But the most legendary encounter will be with his former classmate, a certain Sergio Leone, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Many prestigious speakers are there, from Quentin Tarantino to Bruce Springsteen, via Joan Baez, Clint Eastwood, or Oliver Stone, and we understand that Ennio Morricone first suffered from the snobbery of his former conservatory teachers, judging his work “too commercial”, and that he was then complexed for a long time to be “only” a composer of film music, despite a prolific work known to the greatest number. Two Oscars in 2007 and 2015 will give him belated recognition, and this very beautiful documentary, 2h40 long but which flies by at full speed, pays the best possible tribute to his career.