There’s a thread in Reddit “If someone ask why did you watch Lolita. What will be your answer?”
The famous poster
— For research purposes, thank you!
Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) was an Italian composer and conductor best known for his prolific work in film music. He scored over 400 films and television series. He received two Academy Awards, three Grammys and three Golden Globes. Works includes The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and Cinema Paradiso (1988) and The Legend of 1900 (1998), and
Lolita (1997):
Look at the movie’s 1979 poster’s sublime design—a visual echo of the book’s most whispered incantation.
In the original soundtrack of the movie, all is veiled, blurred through a hazy synthesizer texture that makes it feel like something overheard, not composed. A memory retold through fog.
Morricone liked to use dissonance interrupting rich, beautiful, layered harmonies/melodies to portray unexpected love. For example, “The Crisis” in The Legend of 1900, and “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury” in Lolita.
Here’s a stripped-down piano-cello-flute arrangement version of Lolita Theme by Morricone where you can hear the conversational melody filtered out of the original soundtrack’s blurry synthesizer. The cello initiate and dominated the conversation. The flute trails behind with a hesitant softness, breathy and uncertain. (Note: well actually flutes are usually, if not always, like this, especially in adagios…). And interestingly, at the beginning the melodies between theses two instruments are disjoint, then slowly there’s less and less space between notes to feel safe.
Sounds like a lullaby to me—until it doesn’t.