Francesco Rosi, music and politics

Piero Piccioni, a very prolific composer, was to forge a lasting relationship with the filmmaker Francesco Rosi, a follower of the dossier film, a new genre at the time, Rosi’s films form a mosaic of Italian history, from fascism to the years of lead, with an uncompromising description of political corruption, the actions of the mafia, or social inequalities.

In Salvatore Giuliano (1962), there is little music and it seems to come from the depths of the earth. Rosi was inspired by The Rite of Spring of Stravinsky and had asked Piccioni to “deliver to him the presence of Sicily but without one hearing a note of what makes the Sicilian color. The music had to express the tragedy in culturally universal terms. The Mattei Affair (Palme d’Or, 1972) is part of the same experimental approach, but this time the composition contains no orchestral musical note. With this binary repetitive rhythm, characterized by a fast tempo and strong bass, Piccioni undoubtedly anticipated the current of techno music. It should also be remembered that from the 1950s, Italy was, in this field, at the forefront of modernity thanks to the electronic music studio in Milan.

The centenary of Francesco Rosi’s birth is also the theatrical release of several of his major films and a retrospective of his work at the

Cinematheque of Toulouse then at the Lumière Institute in Lyon.

soundtrack of the week

CLOSE by Lukas Dhont at Universal Music: Valentin Hadjadj finds the Belgian Lukas Dhont after “Girl” (2018) with a melodramatic score that brings the young boy’s buried feelings to life.

CLOSE, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, has been in theaters since November 1, 2022:

In 2015, Valentin Hadjadj wrote his first music for a feature film April and the Extraordinary World, superb animated film directed by Franck Ekinci and Christian Desmares based on the work of Jacques Tardi. Valentin reveals the extent of his talent through his mastery of classic writing and programming tools. The film will win the Crystal for best feature film at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and the Best Original Music Award at the Lisbon Monstra Festival. He was also nominated for the Prix France Musique – SACEM and won the Prix Jeune Talent awarded by the UCMF.

A program in partnership with the film club of Thierry Jousse:

Thierry Jousse offers you a new film club, now every Sunday, at the Nouvel Odéon (street of the School of Medicine, Paris 6th). A wandering in the history of cinema, from silent to the 90s, embellished with an essential exchange with the public.

“Music in the cinema” cycle:
November 6: Maurice Jaubert: L’Atalante (Jean Vigo)
November 13: Henry Mancini: Diamonds on the Couch (Blake Edwards)
November 20: Michel Legrand: Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda)
November 27: Bernard Herrmann: Fahrenheit 451 (François Truffaut)
December 4: Ennio Morricone: The Bird with Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento)
December 11: Lalo Schifrin: Inspector Harry (Don Siegel)

… and with the monthly magazine

POSITIVE