Scene of the Week: The Untouchables – Union Station Shootout
Since the early 1960’s Ennio Morricone has been improving upon mediocre, below average, and exceptional film and television. Over his 91 years on this earth, the man whose music has become synonymous with the spaghetti western genre has composed music for close to 600 different projects. If anyone ever needed a rest, it was Ennio Morricone. The idea that Morricone was still composing music for film into his 90’s is an absolute absurdity. My back hurts every morning and I haven’t even hit 40!
The following scene is flooded with sounds. It’s a 9 minute scene that would probably be cut down to 3 in today’s cinema but it has so much story to tell during its runtime. The buildup of the tension in the scene matched by the buildup of tension in the stringed instruments. It’s like an orgasm of the senses. The shootout, the slowly falling stroller, the perfect baseball slide by Andy Garcia….all while Ennio kills it with his music. I think it’s the most iconic scene in a movie like The Untouchables, which has many such scenes. But it reminds us just how important our ears are to the viewing experience.
