filmbriefs
Composer

Ennio Morricone

4
briefs
13:00
average
52 min
in total
On film.briefs4
13:00

Once Upon a Time in the West

Sergio Leone · 1968

Sergio Leone's 1968 Western, funded by Paramount specifically to secure Henry Fonda, casts the actor against type as a hired killer clearing land for the railroad while a harmonica-playing stranger, played by Charles Bronson, pursues him for reasons the film withholds until its final scenes. Composed with Ennio Morricone's score written and recorded before filming began, and shot across Spain, Utah and Cinecittà, the film ran 165 minutes in Europe to strong box office, but Paramount's 140-minute US cut flopped on release in 1969, a fate the film's reputation has long since reversed.

13:00

The Battle of Algiers

Gillo Pontecorvo · 1966

Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 film reconstructs the Algerian independence struggle against French rule between 1954 and 1957, following FLN fighter Ali La Pointe and the French colonel sent to break the resistance through mass arrest and torture. Cast almost entirely with non-professionals, many of whom had lived through the real events, and shot in a black-and-white newsreel style, the film won the Golden Lion at Venice and was banned in France for years for the discomfort of its subject.

13:00

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Sergio Leone · 1966

Sergio Leone's 1966 close to the Dollars Trilogy follows a bounty hunter, an outlaw and a hired gun across the American Civil War as they hunt buried Confederate gold, shot in Techniscope across Spain on a $1.2 million budget that returned nearly $39 million, built around Eli Wallach's performance and Ennio Morricone's score.

13:00

The Thing

John Carpenter · 1982

A helicopter pilot and a research crew at a remote Antarctic base find a shape-shifting alien freed from a Norwegian camp, and John Carpenter turns the ensuing hunt for the impostor into a study of paranoia as much as a monster film. Poorly received and a box-office loss on release, it has since been reassessed as one of the strongest science-fiction horror films made.