Once Upon a Time in the West

As with his acclaimed score for director Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Ennio Morricone composed the music for Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) prior to production so it could inspire the actors during filming. The score likewise contains recurring themes attached to the movie's main characters. The glorious melody associated with Claudia Cardinale's character Jill McBain, featuring Italian soprano Edda Dell'Orso's ethereal, wordless vocals, provides the film's overarching theme, while a postmodern clash of solo harmonica and buzzsaw electric guitar sketch Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson's violent interactions. The composer's avant-garde roots bear fruit again during "L'attentato" (The Transgression), a brilliant high-anxiety interlude using nothing but percussion and electronic flashes of impending doom. Not unlike the film itself, which received only modest acclaim upon its release, Morricone's 1972 soundtrack would eventually be acknowledged as a masterpiece of cinema.