Item from The Dollars Trilogy by Sergio Leone / United Artists
The sound of the Dollars Trilogy — whistles, electric guitar, human voice used as instrument, and a pocket watch melody that rewrites the rules of what a film score can do.
Morricone wrote the Dollars Trilogy scores in collaboration with Leone — sometimes before the films were shot, with Leone editing to the music rather than the reverse. The result is a score that is not background but active participant: it tells the audience what is coming, how to feel about it, and when the feeling should arrive before the action does. The Man with No Name theme is so identified with the Western genre that it has become the genre's shorthand. The pocket watch music in For a Few Dollars More is the film's emotional logic made audible. The final standoff theme in GBU plays over nearly three minutes of close-ups before anything happens. It is the best-known film score in the spaghetti western genre and one of the most influential in film history.
Not visible. Present in every scene of consequence: the two-note motif that signals a standoff arriving, the coyote-howl main theme of The Good the Bad and the Ugly, the pocket watch melody of For a Few Dollars More that plays over El Indio's ritual and Mortimer's grief. The instruments include electric guitar, trumpet, Jew's harp, human voices producing non-verbal sounds, and an orchestra that plays like it knows something is about to happen.
Also known as: Morricone's Score, The Score, The Theme, The Pocket Watch Melody