01 March 2016

The musical theme of "Cinema Paradiso"


I'll have more to blog about this movie in the future. For now, just the superb musical theme, in two videos. The top is a live performance, apparently by the Munich Symphony Orchestra. The composer/conductor is Ennio Morricone, better known - at least to American audiences - as the composer for all of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. and Once Upon a Time in the West).

The theme for Cinema Paradisio is more lyrical and more evocative than the memorable music from the western epic films. The six-minute version embedded on top features solo performances on piano, clarinet, and flute. If you have seen the movie, this theme music may be enough to bring a tear to your eye.

If you have not seen the movie, I offer the bottom video as a lure. This three minute scene is the iconic closing moment of the movie - a movie that won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe as Best Foreign Movie, plus the Grand Prize at the Cannes film festival. If you do plan to see the movie, I highly recommend the "director's cut" - the unedited version available on DVD - rather than the shortened version that was shown in theaters, for reasons I may discuss at some future blog entry. A superb movie; it deserved all of its awards.

Reposted from 2008 to celebrate Ennio Morricone finally being awarded a well-deserved (and long-overdue) Academy Award.

3 comments:

  1. KenGilbergMarch 2, 2016 at 1:59 PM

    I was a young man recently divorced after 10 years of marriage when Cinema Paradiso came out. When the film was over I cried for a solid 30 minutes. It spoke so clearly of love. That was about 30 years ago. 16 years ago I met and married my darling wife. I am blessed. Thank you so much for TYWKIWDBI. I follow you all the time.

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  2. GeenoMarch 3, 2016 at 2:38 AM

    Just the other day this movie was showed on TV here in Italy. It's one of my favourite movie of all time, makes me cry everytime, but never saw the shortened version until then. To me, it makes absolute no sense, the deleted scenes are the core of the story! Anyway really appreciate you talked about it! Greetings~

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