Amazon.co.uk Review
A decade after
Cinema Paradiso, the Golden Globe-winning score for
The Legend Of 1900 reunites director Giuseppe Tornatore and composer Ennio Morricone for a film rich in affection for memories of jazz, ragtime and blues. This is the fable of Novecento (Tim Roth), a man born on the first day of 1900, who lives on a ship, pays his way by playing the piano, and who has never touched terra ferma. Although it reminds us that Morricone also wrote a wonderful score for Bernardo Bertolucci's
1900 (aka
Novecento), this new music is equally fine. Central to the score are a variety of attractive piano melodies, from the exuberant to the melancholy, sometimes played unaccompanied, more usually with orchestra. The jazz arrangements are akin to those in his score for Leone's
Once Upon A Time in America, while the orchestral writing has the haunting beauty of that score as well as Morricone's Oscar-winning
The Mission. The song "Lost Boys Calling" is performed and co-written by ex-Pink Floyd vocalist Roger Waters, and can also be found on the
debut album by singer Filippa Giordano.
--Gary S. Dalkin