Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars) [Original Soundtrack]

Italian cinema’s fascination with the American West saw its greatest creative breakthrough in 1964: the first partnership of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone. Few director-composer teams have ever been better-suited for each other, with Leone’s intensely dramatic Ford-via-Kurosawa visual language met with equal operatic bravado by Morricone’s endless-vista atmosphere. The titoli grabs you by the poncho instantly when it’s merely that galloping acoustic guitar and the existentially lonesome wandering whistled melody — then the whole orchestra gradually rides over the horizon and it’s like dawn breaking. The hyperventilating piano of “Almost Dead,” the Wrecking Crew-with-spurs rumble “The Chase,” and the trembling fury of “The Result” proved that even Morricone’s “incidental” music cues felt integral.