Original subtitles

My life has always revolved around music.

When I was a child, I was part of the prestigious Cappella Giulia choir.

We performed at St. Peter's Basilica for every solemn function.

Me and the other choirboys wore those classic white and red robes.

I had a soprano voice. Music was already influencing my life.

I knew I wanted to work with music before I was even ten years old.

When I started studying the piano,

I realized there was something more than singing.

Piano became the real deal for me.

Then I enrolled at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music,

which is located at Sant'Agostino in Rome.

That's where I studied to get the most out of my passion for music.

All this is to give you an introduction on how I started working in films.

My first contact in the industry was Luchino Visconti.

A huge name, indeed.

Visconti was doing DEATH IN VENICE, and he needed someone

who could write down some partitions resembling the symphonies of Mahler.

The main character of the film was somewhat based on Mahler.

So, after being approached for the job by some friends,

I started writing partitions that resembled Mahler's style.

Visconti was really impressed by the final result.

There was another issue to solve, though.

I don't know if you remember this detail,

but both the young boy and one of the leading actresses

had to play FUr Elise on the piano.

But they were not good pianists in the slightest

so Visconti asked me to play it badly on purpose.

"Don't worry, I'll do my worst," I told him.

It was really amusing to make one mistake after another.

Then Visconti asked me to write

the partitions for the main pieces of music in the film.

As everybody knows,

the most important one is the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony,

which is played by one of the leading characters in the film

during a scene where they debate the aesthetics of music.

Beautiful dialogue in that scene, by the way.

So, I was climbing the ladder, doing more and more important jobs.

I also worked on Visconti's following film LUDWIG, a four-hour epic.

Music is a key element of the story,

which includes Richard Wagner among the characters.

I actually appear in one of the scenes,

conducting the orchestra during the famous staircase scene.

I conduct the orchestra as Wagner admires

the first performance of the Siegfried ldyll he composed.

It wasn't a bad career start for the twenty-something kid I was.

I could say I started at the top.

Someone suggested my name to Polanski for WHAT?,

as he was looking for some younger, fresher names.

The same thing happened with Paul Morrissey,

who was also looking for some new talents to work with.

So I met with Polanski, and after a brief chat,

he announced I'd score his film. He said it there on the spot.

I was over the moon. Polanski was one of my idols.

I mean, he was the mind behind ROSEMARY'S BABY.

I obviously said yes and put myself to work.

WHAT? widely featured arrangements of pieces of classical music.

Mostly a selection of Schubert, Mozart, and Beethoven.

It was an enthralling experience,

and I could only describe Polanski as an omnipresent genius.

He never lost track of anything.

It was like he had 12 ears and 48 eyes.

It was truly uncanny.

A kind man, also, which made for an exquisite professional relationship.

He had a fantastic sense of humor, too,

something I'd have never expected after watching ROSEMARY'S BABY.

He was an all-around lovely individual.

I guess that's how true geniuses are.

I must admit I have a really romantic nature,

so I couldn't stop seeing that side despite all the madness in the film.

"Why don't we make a love theme?" I asked Roman.

Something to captivate the audience aside from all the shenanigans.

He said he'd think about it,

but he remained adamant about

the classical music bits being a pivotal part of the story.

Schubert, Mozart, they were as classical as it gets.

I couldn't convince him about the love theme,

even though he liked the pieces I submitted to him.

As a matter of fact, he was adamant in helping me find those pieces a home.

That's when he introduced me to Warhol and Morrissey.

They were shooting a movie in Rome a short time after Polanski's film.

And that's how I found myself working in those other weird, surreal pictures.

All thanks to Polanski.

I couldn't have asked for more.

Polanski had an exuberant personality, and he spoke Italian fluently.

We understood each other perfectly, down to the tiniest requests and motivations.

Working with him was a pleasure. It was a bit harder with Morrissey.

We both had a language barrier, unfortunately.

We always needed an interpreter to properly communicate.

Morrissey basically gave me free rein.

After approving the score I wrote for the film,

he gave me free rein when it came to the orchestrations.

I wrote, orchestrated, and conducted both scores for those two films of his.

Polanski's WHAT? was different, as it was just me arranging other composers' music.

Well, Morrissey and Warhol had a villa here in Rome,

so they also had a local branch of the Factory.

There were several different people giving suggestions, ideas and so on.

There was a lot of activity.

But, of course, Morrissey and Warhol were in charge of the project,

with those two films that were scheduled to be filmed in succession.

FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN first, followed by BLOOD FOR DRACULA.

Warhol left a real impression on me. He was the guru of pop art.

Every time we held a production meeting,

he wandered around the room snapping pictures of everyone with his Polaroid.

I bet he had a few pictures of me as well.

Who knows what they look like. I really wonder that.

At the same time he also recorded everything on tape,

probably to ponder over it later.

He was such a peculiar character.

We met so many times but I believe I never heard him speak.

My relationship with Morrissey was quite the opposite, obviously.

We often had some technical issues to solve together.

We even played the score together a bit.

And of course we talked a lot about the flow of the score, the timbres and such.

A very technical collaboration between director and composer.

We really got along well,

especially since he liked the music I had originally written for Polanskis WHAT?

He really fancied my gloomy, romantic personal touch.

I was fresh out of school,

and every time he told me about those two quasi-comedy films,

both so elegantly refined when it came to visuals and costumes,

we both believed my score would be

a good parallel to the more light-hearted mood of the films.

Take BLOOD FOR DRACULA's main theme, for instance,

which plays over the opening credits.

It plays as we see a pensive Udo Kier, the actor portraying an aging Dracula,

standing in front of a mirror as he dyes his hair and puts on some lipstick.

My theme was rather simple but quite effective

in its melancholy and sadness.

As I said, we thought it made a great parallel with the tone of the movie.

Of course, the score also offers some more technical,

thrilling, or even pastoral pieces,

all suited and selected for the tone of the various scenes.

We stuck to the initial idea of having a gloomy score with classical echoes.

As far as I know, Antonio Margheriti mostly handled special effects.

Dealing with technical things Morrissey didn't know much about,

whereas the director would focus on the elegance of the shots.

Margheriti was already an industry veteran,

and his special effects were simple yet effective.

Morrissey made good use of his experience.

The film was Morrissey's, but we owe the effects and some visuals to Margheriti.

We had a brainstorm for the old song

when we found out we could use an old gramophone,

so we came up with a 1920s-style song.

I'm very satisfied with the melody I wrote.

During mixing we even "aged" the audio by adding scratches, noises, and other flaws,

all in order to replicate the sound of an old gramophone.

The final result was flawless. It gave the scene this whole old-style feeling,

which of course was perfect for the film.

This is Polanski's cameo during the tavern scene.

It's a cute scene with Polanski as a crafty guy playing a game with another man.

The film is set in Italy, so I thought an Italian tune would fit perfectly.

For those who haven't seen the film,

Dracula has left Romania to find new blood in Italy.

So we're already in Italy during this tavern scene,

and I wanted to underline the setting with a very Italian, old-style accordion sound.

It creates a very, let's say, rustic feeling.

The perfect mood for a scene set in a small village tavern.

The film is not only set in the villa owned by Vittorio De Sica's character,

but also in this tavern and the surrounding countryside.

I love this aspect of the film.

Both films fared acceptably well here,

although I certainly can't say they were commercial hits.

However, moviegoers liked them, especially the many genre aficionados.

There are a lot of horror fans around,

and I still get emails from fans asking questions about the films to this very day.

I mean, we're talking about two films that are more than three decades old.

After starting my career with the likes of Visconti and Polanski,

my perception of cinema was that of a big fairy land.

I felt I had found myself in a land of geniuses and incredibly talented people.

It was more than learning the trade. I felt I was in an oasis of pure creativity.

I then discovered that the film industry wasn't limited to that paradise.

There were many other genres, directors, actors, composers.

Alas, I felt I had started at the top.

I was on the highest cloud.

As I already said, my involvement with cinema began as a chain of events

which I believed would never end.

It wasn't the case, unfortunately.

The chain broke for many different reasons, and because of many different people.

Visconti died before we had the chance to work together again,

and then Polanski left Italy.

Even Ponti, who had produced some of these films, left the country.

The chain suddenly broke and I found myself stumbling in the dark.

It felt like I'd been booted out of that paradise I was telling you about.

Besides, it's not easy working as a film composer in Italy.

You need to be both talented and skilled at networking.

My career stalled somewhat and I didn't get back on track as I should have.

That's when I started working in the easy-listening field,

becoming an executive for EMI Music.

We've scored a lot of hits on the Italian music scene,

especially with younger talents like Pino Daniele.

He was quite a big name here, and he began to gain notoriety back in the early 1980s.

I also started experimenting with instrumental music,

managing to fare quite well internationally under different pseudonyms.

Even that music bears my, let's say, signature gloomy, romantic touch.

A rather romantic sound.

Automat was another EMI production.

It became a smashing success because it was really ahead of its time.

We were two musicians, and it's an instrumental electronic album.

Every track was made using a single monophonic synthesizer.

To record it today like we did back then would be totally insane.

Imagine recording a whole album using a monophonic synthesizer.

It was long, strenuous work, assembling every track bit by bit.

Basically, the album served to showcase the capabilities of then-new tech.

It became an international hit about 25 years ago,

especially in countries like Brazil.

Despite being considered quite ahead of its time, it remained a one-shot project.

After that I kept working in the easy-listening field.

Very simple, catchy tunes, that sort of thing.

Then, as a sort of throwback to my classical music interest,

I've also produced some pieces done in that very style.

Quite sophisticated sounds,

and obviously suited for many documentaries.

I was essentially asked to compose and orchestrate

something in the vein of the great classical composers.

It was also a throwback to my WHAT? score, of course.

To my beginnings.