Music / Nino Rota

"He was someone who had a rare quality belonging to the world of intuition. Just like children, simple men, sensitive people, innocent people, he would suddenly say dazzling things. As soon as he arrived, stress disappeared, everything turned into a festive atmosphere; the movie entered a joyful, serene, fantastic period, a new life."

— Federico Fellini about his associated composer

Giovanni Rota Rinaldi (3 December 1911 – 10 April 1979), better known as Nino Rota, was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and music academic, and one of the giants of Italian film scoring along with Ennio Morricone and Mario Nascimbene.

The Milan-born composer was very prolific, writing more than 150 scores for Italian and foreign productions from The '30s up until his death in 1979, with an average of three scores per year (as many as ten scores per year at his busiest). His most famous collaborations included the likes of Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini and Francis Ford Coppola.

His film music style is characterised by good-humoured energy verging on satire, once compared to a blend between the theatrical irony of Sergei Prokofiev, the impish wit of Francis Poulenc and jazz idioms ala Henry Mancini. He didn't outright ignore the emotional side of the films he scored, but generally avoided the overly sentimental by coming at the subject obliquely with a slight sense of the absurd, which fitted the filmmaking style of Fellini like a glove.

Danny Elfman frequently cites Rota as a major influence.

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Films scored by him on this wiki:

• I Vitelloni (1953)
• La Strada (1954)
• Senso (1954)
• War and Peace (1956)
• Nights of Cabiria (1957)
• The Great War (1959)
• La Dolce Vita (1960)
• Purple Noon (1960)
• Rocco and His Brothers (1960)
• The Leopard (1963)
• 8˝ (1963)
• Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
• The Taming of the Shrew (1967)
• Spirits of the Dead (1968)
• Romeo and Juliet (1968)
• Fellini Satyricon (1969)
• Waterloo (1970)
• Roma (1972)
• The Godfather (Part I and Part II, 1972-1974) ^note Posthumous use of some tracks in Part III in 1990
• Amarcord (1973)
• Fellini's Casanova (1976)
• Death on the Nile (1978)
• The Count of Monte Cristo (1980 Mini Series) ^note Released after his death

Tropes & Trivia in his works:

• Associated Composer: Again, he's worked a lot with Federico Fellini and is mainly remembered as being associated with him.
• Cult Soundtrack: Some of his soundtracks such as Amarcord have become so famous that, detached from their works, they've become associated with Italy itself.

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