Ennio Morricone has scored his share of awful Italian movies in his time (in fact, he's scored roughly 100,000 of them) and virtually without exception his standards have not slipped and he has raised whatever detritus is presented on-screen to an unfathomably high level by his wonderful musical gifts. But it is when presented with a meaningful, strong film that the Italian maestro hits his peak and goes beyond wonderful to a level no other film composer can match, and such is the case with his wonderful score to Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso, the most beautiful foreign film to have achieved worldwide success since the earliest days of Fellini.

The score simply bursts with charm: great themes, wonderful solo performances, and just about as much emotion as its possible to wring out of a set of musicians. The music is based around a core of superb themes - the piano-led main theme, a beautiful guitar theme in "Maturity", almost heartbreaking melancholy theme first heard in "While Thinking About Her Again" and the stunning love theme, actually written by Morricone's youngest son Andrea, now breaking into the world of film music in his own right.

The charm and grace inherent in virtually every cue sweeps over you, lifts you and leaves you feeling marvellous. It's not often that music can do this to you; but trust Morricone to be the composer to do it. There is a slight change in mood from time to time, from the anguished strains of "Cinema on Fire" to the jazz of "From American Sex Appeal to the First Fellini".

You would be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful film score than Cinema Paradiso; it won virtually every musical award in the world on its release (though the Oscar that year went to The Little Mermaid by Alan Menken; yes, well) and deserved every one of them. Really, truly, a masterpiece, for an absolute gem of a movie.

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