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Pino Donaggio born as a classical musician in the ’60 had a lot of success writing pop songs and one of these “You don’t have to say you love me” became a hit all over the world and was played also by Elvis Presley. His Career as film composer began later, when in the 1973 was born an artistic partnership with the director Brian De Palma which lasted more than twenty years and made him one of the most appreciated film composer in the world.
To our question on what has convinced him to join the project on the Neorealism produced by Triworld Cinema, Pino Donaggio ironically answers he didn’t know much about Neorealism because at that time fortunately he was too young. Regarding his role in the project he reveals that even before knowing the details, the professional relationships and the friendships matured in the past with the co-director Giovanni Bozzacchi and the editor Roberto Silvi, had already convinced him to take part of it.
The first opportunity to talk about the music has been during a conversation with Carlo Lizzani who indicated boogie-woogie in the background that the Americans brought to Italy during the liberation and that became the official music of the years of Neorealism.
The most difficult challenge and the greatest satisfaction composing the soundtrack of the Neorealism?
Pino Donaggio talks about his constant scruple to not overlap with his soundtrack on the original musics of the neorealist movies, and about his pride to put the music over so many famous directors in the same time: the Taviani brothers, Ermanno Olmi, Martin Scorsese, Bernardo Bertolucci… and with an enthusiastic smile seems to ask us “when never could I have had the chance to put the music over all those great directors at once?”
At the end we take advantage of the sympathy and generosity of Pino Donaggio to ask him the last question.
What do you think about the contemporary cinema? There is still place for Neorealism?
According to Pino Donaggio a new kind of Neorealism is still possible today, even with different names, but the most important thing is that the movie industry has the courage to invest in the creativity of the younger generations.
