Man With A Harmonica: A Masterwork in Cinematic Music

[chriscase]

Anyone who has seen Sergio Leone's epic Spaghetti Western, Once Upon A Time In The West, will likely remember the striking soundtrack to the film, composed by Ennio Morricone, who also composed iconic soundtracks to such Leone films as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The single most significant segment of the soundtrack is a theme that recurs throughout the film, entitled simply "Man With A Harmonica". If you do not remember this piece of music (or have not seen the film), take a listen to it to get your first impressions or refresh your memory:



For anyone familiar with Morricone's music, all the hallmarks are here - haunting melody, exquisite arrangement, and a depth of emotion that is suitably epic to match the subject. A simple harmonica melody intertwines ingeniously with a growing orchestral accompaniment and peaks in a distorted electric guitar solo that feels like one of the most unbearably heavy things anyone has ever played. But there is something more about this particular piece that I think raises it to the level of high art. To understand why, you have to look at some of the details of the film, Once Upon A Time In The West.

When Sergio Leone set out to make Once Upon A Time In The West, he was already the single most identifiable director associated with this wildly campy and popular style of film. In many people's minds, Leone was the Spaghetti Western, and he may have felt at risk of never being taken seriously as a filmmaker in any other genre. So he set out to make an apotheosis of his own genre - a Spaghetti western so stylized and artful, it would destroy the limitations critics and audiences assumed applied to such a campy and ultra violent type of film - not by backing off the prominent features of the Spaghetti Western, but by taking them over the top.

In his quest to do this, Leone sought to create a villain of epic proportions, and cast Henry Fonda as the psychopathic murderer, Frank. This casting decision was quite controversial, something Leone played up in the film by insisting Fonda sport a clean-shaven, blue-eyed heroic look even as the audience is first introduced to him after the slaughter of an entire family by him and his gang of thugs.

The hero of the piece, played by Charles Bronson, is a man known only as "Harmonica", due to the fact he shows up throughout the film, playing a bizarre little melody on a harmonica whist expertly destroying every group of Frank's gang he encounters.

Now so far there is nothing surprising about Morricone making the harmonica the centerpiece of his theme. Anyone familiar with the gorgeous theme from The Mission, Gabriel's Oboe, will see parallels here. The man with the harmonica gets a harmonica theme - of course. But there is still something very peculiar about the theme itself. If you listen to the above track around 2:20 the sound of the harmonica goes from repeating the same three notes clearly to a sort of death rattle, as if the player is losing the ability to even play the instrument properly at all. You hear and see it even more clearly in the live orchestral version:



So what is this all about? It is obvious from the beginning of the film that the relationship between Harmonica and Frank is a revenge trope. A terrible crime lives between them in the past, and as the final confrontation between Harmonica and Frank approaches, the audience plays a sort of detective, speculating as to what it might be. When the mystery is finally revealed, the meaning of the death rattle of the harmonica is made hideously clear.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That peculiar sound, as if the player were simply breathing through the instrument, has been with us the entire film, as it has been with Harmonica, as it was when a boy struggled in hopeless desperation to gain his beloved brother a few last moments of life with that harmonica shoved into his mouth by the evil Frank.

This meaning, when combined with the gravitas of the theme itself, transforms this musical piece from something that simply sounds totally badass into a stark and terrible expression of hate, sadness and loss at the very center of the film. This is truly a case where the musical theme has merged with the heart of the story so completely, the two appear to be inseparable. We're well beyond "music to go along with the movie" territory here.

[WhiskeySykes]

Very well written. So well written, I forgot you were talking about a spaghetti western. I'm trying to think of other ost's that actually tie into a scene. I think the most famous is Close Encounters.

Other themes that took a psychotic bent were MacBeth's (2015) (the entire ost), and Lux Aeterna in Requiem for a Dream. Lux keeps spiraling higher and frenetic through the movie, until it finally ends with the last scene, as if to snap back to reality. MacBeth's score twists and contorts as the he loses all honor and humanity. It's lunacy given sound. The group that worked with Kurzel are what I'd call black acoustic, or black metal's cerebral twin. Don't know if that's thing, but they don't know that either.

[Halie Satanus]

Never a big fan of 'In the west.' It didn't have the chemistry of the earlier 'man with no name' trilogy. I think Leone/Morricone used a similar idea with Cockeye's theme in 'Once Upon a Time in America.' For some reason I can picture 'William Forsythe' (who played 'Cockeye') playing the theme on an Ocarina, but maybe I just imagine I remember that... Often considered Leone's forgotten film because it isn't a western, still one of the great gangster movies..




I guess similar uses of music interacting with the action..

Duelling Banjo's - Deliverance.
Back when mobile phones became common we used to replace friends ring tones with the duelling banjo's.


Ride of the Valkyries - Apocalypse Now.
An idea copied so many times it's become a movie trope in it's own right.


All along the watchtower - BSG.
Not a movie, but the music was central to the story. Not going to spoil it but this was a hugely revealing scene.


Lastly.

Cloud Atlas.

The OST (Cloud Atlas Sextet) is central to the story. And what a piece of music it is.... What a film it is, so underrated when it came out...



The Sextet.

[Gallus]

The best use of (pre)battle music in movie history imo:

[WhiskeySykes]

I really want to see Cloud Atlas. Tom Hanks is my personal choice for greatest living actor, at least as far as anyone recognizable. He's done what rarely has been, transforming from comedy to drama, without becoming some pretentious wreck of a human being. He brings real presence to his characters. I look forward to watching him in The Circle.

[Halie Satanus]

Cloud Atlas, too many people fixated on the prosthetics and forgot to focus on the story. It's a superb movie...

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

This was actually intended to be a sequel to the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Clint Eastwood turned down the role and said that the concept was bad. Later on they scrapped the idea of putting the films together and played down the connection in later marketing. Having No Name be Harmonica was too much of a stretch for some people and they felt that giving No Name/Angel/Blondie/Nobody a backstory was unnecessary and destructive to the established character of the Dollars Trilogy.

Two Mules for Sister Sarah isn't bad either. Also check out The Outlaw Josey Wales. Heck while you're at it you might as well watch Kurosawa's Yojimbo which arguably started the modern Spaghetti Western craze (a term that was coined by the Japanese to refer to an Italian or Spanish made Western, an American Western might be called a Macaroni Western).

[chriscase]

An alternate theory of the film would be an inversion of the flashback with the present-time narrative: In real time, the boy holding his brother up on his shoulders is struggling, imagining a future time and story during which he might obtain his revenge. The harmonica theme / sound is "leakage" of the present into his delirious fantasy.