Ennio Morricone, "La Storia Di un Soldato (The Story of a Soldier)" (1966)

(listen)

Here's a song whose impact I suspect is almost entirely dependent on seeing the movie from which it comes, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and even more specifically the scene with which it is associated in its context. In effect I am recommending with this a 161-minute movie, and I know that's a lot to ask. Odds are reasonably good if you read this blog that you have seen it, so I call your attention to the scene in which Eli Wallach's Tuco is tortured for information in a Civil War POW camp. An impromptu POW orchestra, assembled for the purpose, is instructed to play when prisoners are tortured, in order to mask the sounds of the screams. This is the song they play. Truly, it's ludicrous—the song is a narrative device, it doesn't mask screams, it's quiet. It sounds the way you and the cowed orchestra feel in the moment, knowing such depravity goes on in this world, in tandem with the powerlessness of the situation, which must be accepted. The music is slow, ponderous, yet filigreed and lovely, and for all its simplicities it verges on the ornate. It's also a production piece that would likely not even be easy to reproduce on a stage with a soundboard, let alone standing at dusk in the open corner of a POW camp in the Texas desert, moaning vocal lines, blowing sweet harp, tapping fragile notes on a xylophone. The scene is thus almost funny, yet deeply moving at the same time. The brutalities inside the cabin, the expressions on the faces of the musicians outside and of the leering guards who find it all a big joke, and the mournful music itself—the heart is absolutely rent.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly OST (1966)

In listening recently to this remarkable soundtrack from Ennio Morricone I have appreciated that I saw the movie again recently, and wondered if that is somehow coloring my perception, causing me to overvalue it now. If that's the case all I can see is one of two things: 1) for Pete's sake, go and see this movie, or 2) caveat emptor, the dependency might be real. But I don't think so. The title theme, way back in the day, drove me to see the movie in the first place. I remember being confused then by the whole thing, too young or impatient or both to grasp the nuance of the pacing. And while I still appreciate that title theme and the many ingenious variations of its recurrence—who, after all, could possibly argue with the grunting and whistling and whip cracks and "Aaaaa / Go go go migo"—now it's the shrewd, deft sensibility that Morricone brought in collaboration with the movie's director and co-screenwriter, Sergio Leone, that really seems to me to bring the depth. "La Storia De Un Soldato" (or "The Story Of A Soldier"), for example, appears as the music that an abused troupe of POWs performs in an amazing and bizarre scene, forced to play in order to drown out the cries of soldiers, in this case Eli Wallach's Tuco ("the Ugly"), as they are tortured. It's a beautiful and haunting song, but made even more so by the brutal context in which it is used (if comically weird as well, I must say). The climaxing numbers here, "L'estasi Dell'oro (or "The Ecstasy of the Gold") and "Il Triello" (or "The Trio"), are also not to be missed, absolutely stirring, unforgettable, in the way they manage to put a cap on the scene that puts a cap on the resolution of the movie. When you factor in other work Morricone has done for dozens of movies—I particularly know and can also enthusiastically vouch for Once Upon a Time in the West (another Leone), The Mission, and The Untouchables—I think you know where I'm going with this. The guy is a master, and this and the movie it accompanies are as good as any places to start. So don't waste any more time if you can help it. Get on this.