And Si salvi chi vuole (1980) is not a disappointment: the main title is vintage Morricone, fresh, bouncy and inventive. Irony is there from the first second, and Ennio Morricone builds up a tremendous piece, introducing the instruments one by one, to bring us through a musical trip of the best effect. Halfway, the theme becomes more aggressive, before resolving back to the first part. This is Ennio Morricone of the Seventies at his best. Director Roberto Faenza has been working with the Maestro during 27 years, on all of his 8 movies until 1995 : from Escalation and H2S (both 1968) to Sostiene Pereira (1995). This collaboration ended abruptly with Marianna Ucrìa (1997), for which Morricone was credited during pre-production, but where the composer credit eventually went to Franco Piersanti. A quarrel maybe, or simply a friendly farewell. Faenza is still very active these days, but usually calling Paolo Buonvino to score his movies. Now a safe bet in Italian cinema, Faenza was once the most controversial amongst the directors of the peninsula. Each of his movies had its spare of bans, slaughters or censorship. Forza Italia (1978) is a good example, but Si salvi chi vuole wasn't an exception, and had him move to the US to make his next movie (Copkiller, 1984).

The Italian title means more or less “save yourself if you want”, in reference to the expression “si salvi chi può” (roughly “save yourself if you can”, or in other words “run for your life”). The movie is a satirical comedy where Gastone Moschin plays the father and Claudia Cardinale the mother of a left-wing family whose universe collpases with the arrival in their home of an epicurean character, whose lifestyle will thrash their convictions.

“Platitudes”, “vulgarity”, “miserable tricks from vaudeville” were the answers of the critics. Faenza was now considered a politically-incorrect director, and the movie was soon forgotten.
Cometa released the score in 1980 on an LP coupled with Il pianeta d'acqua, an even more obscure project of the same year. The five tracks from Si salvi chi vuole made up side A of the LP, and included, in addition to the satirical comedy main title evoked above, two fast upbeat tempo folklore pieces accompanied by tambourines (Tarantella prima and seconda), a light pop theme (Nella casa borghese), and a psychedelic rock piece (Colpi di piume e tempesta). A short programme but quite a remarkable one, with a lot of rhythm and inventivity.

As part of its very exciting undertaking of re-releasing all its LPs on CD, Cometa has now delivered an expanded edition of the score. In addition to the five known tracks, all remastered to the best effect, we get 10 new previously unreleased pieces, for a total timing of about 37 minutes. Tracks 7 and 10 (Si salvi chi vuole #3 and #6) introduce a new theme for brass band, which nicely complements the known material, and so does track 12 (#8), a traditional folk piece for clarinet and accordion. The last piece (#11) seems to carry on the same spirit, but appears to be a very poor repetition of the same tamburine and bells clatter. You can safely switch off your player after just a few seconds.

The rest of the score is essentially piano based. Tracks 9 and 14 (#5 and #10) are nice solo piano elevator music. Track 11 (#7) is more of the same, but seemingly reusing the melody of Nella casa borghese. Track 6 (#2) is a rather dull solo piano circus piece. More interesting are tracks 8 and 13 (#4 and #9) where the piano plays a sad melody, whose melancholy is accentuated by an inexperienced female voice. It sounds like a very sad woman absentmindedly humming a theme while doing some housekeeping. Very simple, but effective and unusual Morricone.
All in all, the extra tracks don't make up a substantial addition to the score. However, a definitive edition of a Morricone soundtrack is always valuable, be it only for the 5 interesting tracks - which had never appeared on CD before -, for the appetite of the completists - sometimes less caring about the quality of the music - or, and most importantly, because that's what we all want Cometa to do: come up with the complete edition of the Morricone works which they own, with no exception whatsoever!