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Chris' Soundtrack Corner proudly presents the CD soundtrack to Il Sorriso Del Ragno, composed by Daniele Patucchi. The title of this 1971 Italian film is properly translated into English as "The Spider's Smile," but the film, if known at all, is probably best recognized by its International English title, Web Of Deception. It's the only film directed by Massimo Castellani, who had better success as a script supervisor and a second unit or assistant director.
Based on a script written by Italo Gasperini and Armando Morandi, with dialogue provided by Fabio Piccioni, Il Sorriso Del Ragno is a crime thriller disguised as a travelogue. Ranging from location shooting in France and multiple regions of Greece, cinematographer Giorgio Tonti – not to mention the film's cast – must have certainly enjoyed the opportunity filming in the many picturesque Aegean landscapes used in the film.
The story follows private investigator and ladies' man Tony Driscoll; he's got a good record at recovering stolen goods, and so when thieves make off with $5 million in jewels from a French bank, the insurance agency covering the stolen gems hires him to get them back. Or, is he just out for himself? The plot makes the most of this question, and its eventual solution.
A self-taught musician and composer, Daniele Patucchi was born in 1945 in Turin. By the time he began writing and performing music professionally he was adept in a wide range of styles, from jazz and rock to classic and also knew his way around a bank of digital synthesizers. With a gift for tuneful, pop-oriented melodies which served him well across more than 35 movie soundtracks. His music for Il Sorriso Del Ragno is organized around five central musical ideas. Three of them – Main, Suspense, Action themes – form the lion's share of the score's thematic architecture and serve to enhance the adventure, tension, and intrigue as the story plays out. Additional musical ideas cover the film's adventures in Corinth and provides for source music for other settings the characters visit.
Il Sorriso Del Ragno is an effective and enjoyable score. It possesses a complementary thematic unity through recurrences of its primary motifs, which proffer enough variation in their treatment to make for a compelling – and often toe-tapping – listen away from the film itself.
Chris' Soundtrack Corner is pleased to make this score available for essentially the first time (only three tracks have been previously released). Additionally, six tracks that were not used in the movie have been added as bonus tracks: alternate or varied presentations composed for the movie or re-arranged for use on one of CAM's promotional library music records.
The Il Sorriso Del Ragno soundtrack album is produced by Christian Riedrich and mastered by Stefan Betke. The CD is accompanied by a 12-page illustrated booklet designed by Aletta Heinsohn featuring detailed, exclusive notes on the film and its score by film music journalist Randall D. Larson, who deconstructs the score's elements in detail.
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