Music Umberto Tozzi

Original Film Music Danny Beckerman

Music

"Tu" "Gloria" "Alleluia Se" "Stella Stai" "Calma" "Dimmi Di No" "Luci Ed Ombre" "Ti Amo"

Music and Lyrics by Giancarlo Bigazzi and Umberto Tozzi

Umberto Tozzi was the perfect pop music composer to conjure up the migrant Italian musical taste of the times, and the film includes grabs from his two best known tunes, Gloria and Ti Amo.

In the DVD commentary, director Michael Pattinson and writer Jan Sardi discuss where the idea of using Tozzi's music came from. Pattinson suggests that he first heard a Tozzi album at Sardi's house, and Sardi agrees his mother was likely to have had a Tozzi album because he was a big pop star in the 1980s - not such much a Jimmy Barnes as the Italian male version of a Kylie Minogue.

There is no point spending any time on Tozzi here. He is an Italian pop musician and composer, and he has a detailed wiki here - though pub quiz competitors might score extra points for noting that Laura Branigan, who sang Gloria up a storm in 1982, appeared as the lead in the terrible Australian film Backstage.

The trade off for using a well known artist like Tozzi is that there was no LP or 45 release related to the film.

According to director Michael Pattinson, composer Danny Beckerman contributed some incidental music, which matched up to the Tozzi music that dominates the soundtrack. An example can be found around the 1'20"26 mark in the Australian DVD, when Gino says farewell to his school.

It would seem that this is the same Beckerman (also Beckermann) who would later score the the Arch Nicholson thriller Fortress (1985) and then Nicholson's contribution to the croc genre, the 1987 Dark Age.

But there were two Beckermans active in composing in Australia, and databases consistently confuse them. One Beckerman active in Australia was Danny Beckerman, founder and pianist for the London band Fortes Mentum, credited at this site with all the above scores. This Beckerman has a very affectionate tribute site dedicated to all things Fortes Mentum, home page here. As usual, Imdb provides no clarity or certainty, here.

(Below: Umberto Tozzi)