Italian Western – Violent Image, Savage Soundtrack Volume Two
Italian Western – Violent Image, Savage Soundtrack Volume Two
John Mansell
674 pages
6 x 9
Book Type: Black & White
Paper Type: Black & white interior with white paper
Paper Size: 50 lb
979-8-88771-955-9 Italian Western Soundtracks vol. 2
979-8-88771-956-6 Italian Western Soundtracks vol. 2 hb
ITALIAN WESTERN: VIOLENT IMAGE, SAVAGE SOUNDTRACK VOL. II PER QUALCHE WESTERN IN PIù
When we listen to Morricone, Nicolai, Bacalov, Giombini, and De Masi today, we hear more than themes. We hear the echo of an era when Italian cinema dared to challenge the monopoly of American imagery and sound. With minimal means, it forged a style that would later influence filmmakers and composers worldwide. Ironically, Hollywood itself would end up imitating the Italian sound of the West, a sound once mocked as “spaghetti,” now inseparable from the myth of the cowboy.
John Mansell’s book captures this fascinating paradox with precision and affection. His research maps not only the films and their makers, but the complex network of ideas, aesthetics, and experiments that defined an entire generation of artists. What emerges from these pages is not nostalgia, but history, a portrait of creativity under constraint, of artisans who turned limitation into language.
Composer Kristian Sensini.
John Mansell is a British Film Music Critic, Soundtrack Liner Notes Writer, Founder of the online blog Movie Music International, Soundtrack Collector, and a member of the International Film Music Critics Association. (IFMCA).
"I must admit I must have led a sheltered life for whilst obsessed with film music for most of my adult life- wrongly as it turned out, but that is another story - Italian Westerns and their music escaped me, even when films like THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, THE BIG GUNDOWN etc, were in the Movie Houses. So John Mansell's second tome on this highly popular and ultimately interesting genre is a welcome breath of fresh air after soaking up endless discussions on John Williams, John Barry, et al. The book is truly amazing, I was fascinated by stories, composers and films I must be honest and say I had never heard of. Loads of information, photos and facts, full of interesting material you can't stop going back and dipping into John Mansell is one of the great unsung heroes of film music, not getting the recognition he so rightly deserves. I have known him since the late 60s, and his love of film music has never left him; he has never wavered like me now and then. His knowledge is encyclopedic, as these two books and his book on Hammer Film music will testify. The big plus of any book on music, whatever it is, is that once read, you feel you want to search the music out and listen to it. I can assure you that this book delivers very heavily on that score."
- John Williams (former editor, Music from the Movies and creator of Frome Silents to Satellites Author, and film music critic)
Hear John's interview here