Collaboration with Leone

 

Morricone has described his relationship with Leone as a “Catholic marriage, which is to say indissoluble.” (Brown, 1994, 228).

Sergio Leone, the director of A Fistful of Dollars, also grew up in Rome. He and Morricone first met as school children when they attended the same school for a year (OMM, 2007). Leone began pursuing a career in the film industry at the age of 18 and by the time he asked Morricone to collaborate on A Fistful of Dollars in 1964 had experience in many roles within the industry. These included assistant to the director, assistant director, writer, and solo director (Frayling, 2000, 16). The partnership of Leone and Morricone lasted through many years and many famous movies such as For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West (Burlingame & Crowdus, 1995, 76). Morricone and Leone worked collaboratively, with both providing ideas for the style of music and atmosphere they wanted the music to provide and Morricone working to make it a complete package. According to Morricone A Fistful of Dollars was “the worst film Leone made and the worst score I did” (OMM, 2007). However, despite Morricone’s opinion of the movie and score it was a huge theater success due to word of mouth (Frayling, 2000, 22). This success cemented their partnership and Morricone became Leone’s composer of choice for the rest of Leone’s life.

Leone on the set of A Fistful of Dollars, featured here with Clint Eastwood.


Images Courtesy of:

The Scott Rollins Film and TV Trivia Blog

Scraps From the Loft Blog