‘Django’ Composer Takes Aim at Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino may have won an Oscar for “Django Unchained” (for best original screenplay), but he’s getting less than favorable reviews from the composer who supplied some whistle-heavy spaghetti western tracks for the movie’s soundtrack.

Ennio Morricone, who has worked on three previous Tarantino films, told film students in Rome that he would never collaborate with the director again, saying he “places music in his films without coherence.”

Not that Mr. Morricone was impressed with the movie itself, which included one of his songs, “Ancora Qui” (sung by Elisa Toffoli) and three short instrumentals. “To tell the truth, I didn’t care for it,” Mr. Morricone said, according to The Hollywod Reporter. “Too much blood.”

It could not be immediately determined whether David Bowie, whose song “Cat People” was used in a memorable scene in Mr. Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” shared Mr. Morricone’s assessment. But it may come as a surprise to admirers of classic moments like Mr. Blonde’s radical barbering of a police officer in “Reservoir Dogs” (to Stealer Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You”) and John Travolta and Uma Thurman’s twist in “Pulp Fiction” (to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell”).

Mr. Morricone, 84, has written music for more than 500 films by directors including Bernardo Bertolucci, Pedro Almodovar, Oliver Stone, and Sergio Leone, whose 1960s spaghetti western classics “A Fis! t Full of Dollars” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” inspired “Django Unchained.” He won an honorary Oscar in 2007, and has been described as “frequently the lone savior of poor films made bearable â€" at times even memorable â€" merely because of his compositions.”