Rustichelli, Carlo

(1916-2004)

   Musician and composer. A versatile and prolific composer with over 250 original film scores to his credit, in addition to his arrangements for many others, Rustichelli studied piano in Bologna and then composition at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome. In the 1930s and 1940s he composed mostly operas and theater music but also made a first foray into writing for film with his collaboration on the score of Mario Bonnard's Papa per una notte (Dad for a Night, 1939). However, his more regular involvement with cinema came in the postwar period, beginning with his music for Pietro Germi's Gioventu perduta (Lost Youth, 1947). He subsequently wrote the music for all of Germi's films, including the Oscar-winning Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce Italian Style, 1961), although he received his first Nastro d'argento for his score of Germi's lesser-known L'uomo di paglia (A Man of Straw, 1959). He also came to work with all the other, both major and minor, Italian directors across a wide variety of genres, moving easily from spaghetti Westerns and peplums to social comedies and the classic horror thrillers of Mario Bava. He collaborated extensively with Mario Monicelli, earning another Nastro d'argento for his score of Monicelli's L'armata Brancaleone (For Love and Gold, 1966), and with Pier Paolo Pasolini, for whom he arranged the music for Accattone (Accattone! 1961), Mamma Roma (1962), and Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964). After an intense involvement that saw him sometimes score over 20 films in a single year, he began to reduce his participation in films in the early 1980s, his last major contribution being the score for Nanni Loy's Amici miei atto III (My Friends Act III, 1985).