il Barone Rosso

Song of the Day 5/09/2022

Il Barone Rosso by Luciano Michelini

Here’s a rare instance where a movie is not remembered for anything but an obscure soundtrack piece.

Il Barone Rosso was a minor composition in an Italian Melodrama from 1974 titled La Belissima Estate (The Beautiful Summer), about a boy who run’s away to Milan to find his runaway father. Decades later, on Curb Your Enthusiasm, the track would come to represent the operatic gloom of a bumbling celebrity putz in west LA.

Every time I hear this song, I think of cringeworthy storylines that often come full circle, of a famed, almost now purposeless artist who spends his days roaming around the city of angels to see who is most worthy of being bothered. And now I think of missed opportunity, of an Italian film no one will ever see.