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ABOUT

I think it was nearly the end of 1997, when I first wrote Michael Mann a hand-written letter with the enthusiasm of the keenest fan, after having received his office's address from “a friend” of mine then publisher of American Cinematographer.

A copy of the letter, together with other notes, was left for some time stuck on a wall in my office at the mercy of my loving and accidental glances.

One day, at the beginning of 2000, in a fit of cleaning and tidying a xerox copy of the letter, together with other papers, came to light and with resignation I threw it into the waste-bin, to some extent giving up to all hope.

By sheer coincidence after a short time I received a mail tubular container, roughly one meter long, from the USA. In astonishment , at first thinking of a present from a distant, American relative of mine, I opened it with obvious enthusiasm but I was literally struck dumb: I found a poster of The Insider and a card with a few but lively lines.

I was not long in thanking and, this time, it was not a long wait for the answer, neither it could have been more appreciated because my interlocutor addressed me confidentially in first name terms! But this all was not the rousing factor of my passionate work, it was just its consequence.

I will not talk at length on other technical aspects of films; there are, for this purpose, two books that have been a pleasant find and have been a great source of inspiration to me (Michael Mann Falsopiano by Alessandro Borri – Michael Mann Il Castoro by Pier Maria Bocchi).

Therefore this reading is addressed to those who, like me, love Michael Mann’s movies and who get excited by a piece of incidental music and sometimes have to afford a delusion when buying the sound track.

Like I said above,in addition to having been an inspiring listening experience It has also been to me an exciting challenge, which, after a few years takes shape in a proper analytical dimension with the aim of letting you appreciate more and more the peculiarity of this great film director who, while close to a certain electronic AVANT-GARDE ambient minimalism, is mainly able to be as well as the executive producer of his scores also a deep connoisseur, brilliant experimenter and passionate popularizer of good music globally speaking.

Michael Mann cinema is not only perfection, state of the art, style and meticulousness in directing, photography and editing but a non-conventional use of music as well, which is out of the traditional canons often followed by other filmmakers.

His music is intended to be an image-fixing one, which frees itself (as for the other technical aspects of his films) from a mere aesthetic search for its own sake and which is always a sort of artistic dogma that, in its uniqueness aims to blend in with a story sequence of events.

 

First Draft 2003 Final Draft July 2007 Updated June 2020

©Fabio Pirovano

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