Riz Ortolani brings Tarantino a driving, kinetic score whose specific source is just as important as its immediate force.
A piece of Italian western music with its own identity
I giorni dell'ira, known in Spanish as Los días de la ira, is a film by Tonino Valerii released in 1967 with music by Riz Ortolani. Its theme is reused in Tarantino's work, especially in Kill Bill and Django Unchained. It is not a composition by Ennio Morricone, even though both composers are present in the repertory of the Italian western.
Precision in the name matters because Ortolani developed a very broad career and cannot be reduced to an imitation of another composer. His music circulated through different genres, from drama to exploitation cinema. Tarantino selects part of that catalog; the later popularity of the borrowing does not turn that selection into a complete description of his work.
The theme from The Days of Wrath has a direct, forceful energy. The accents and the sweep of the melody create a sense of decisiveness that is immediately recognizable. That quality is useful when a film needs to heighten a gesture without stopping to build a long musical progression. The entrance can function almost like a statement of strength.
The recording also retains the texture of its era. The interest is not only in the notes that could be played again, but in the sound of a performance and a production from an earlier time. By incorporating it, Tarantino introduces a material memory of Italian cinema. The past is heard inside the new scene, even if the viewer does not immediately identify the original title.
A brief accent in Kill Bill and a push in Django
In Kill Bill, Ortolani's music is part of a selection that can shift registers very quickly. A piece does not have to accompany an entire fight to be meaningful. A short fragment can intensify an entrance, a reaction, or a movement, and disappear before the viewer experiences it as a stable background.
That fragmentary use is especially important when comparing the film with a record. Hearing the full theme makes it possible to appreciate its development, but it does not necessarily reproduce the experience of the edit. Tarantino can use only part of its energy and turn it into an accent. The piece's identity remains, while its duration and relationship to the action change.
In Django Unchained, I giorni dell'ira accompanies the protagonist's training and physical affirmation. The association with the western is more explicit, but a transformation still takes place. The music no longer belongs to Valerii's story or to his characters; it takes part in building Django as someone capable of acting effectively after having been treated as property.
The musical drive helps prevent the practice from feeling like a neutral sequence of exercises. Repetition of actions gains direction and confidence. The theme can gather changes of shot and situation under a single sense of forward movement, without needing to explain each step through dialogue. The energy of the older repertory is put at the service of a new identity.
Reuse and its limits
That comparison makes it possible to hear two scales of editing. In a brief use, the theme acts like a burst of energy that transforms an instant. In a training block, it offers continuity across several actions and helps convey a progression. The difference is not that one piece is better or worse for each film, but how much time it is given and what relationship it establishes with the character's movements.
Tarantino's reputation for violence can lead people to describe any borrowing as music for a massacre. In Ortolani's case, it is better to pay attention to the scene and the actual length of the fragment. Learning, preparing, challenging, or finishing off a gesture are different functions. Musical intensity alone does not prove that the image represents a slaughter.
The relationship with theexploitation cinema culture also does not allow just any well-known theme by the composer to be included in Tarantino. Ortolani wrote music that has been reused by other directors, and those uses must be kept separate. A thematic compilation or a list of affinities is not a film credit. Each attribution needs a specific piece and a specific film.
It is also important to distinguish selection from commission. The use of I giorni dell'ira does not mean that Ortolani composed an original score for Kill Bill or Django. The creative work had already been done; Tarantino intervenes by choosing a new context. Recognizing both moments makes it possible to value the composer without attributing to him narrative decisions made decades later.
The most fruitful connection appears when you listen to what the piece preserves and what the edit changes. What remains is a sense of decisiveness born in the Italian western; what changes is the body, the gesture, and the story that receive that impulse. Ortolani contributes something more precise than a retro atmosphere: a musical form capable of making convincing the instant when a character stops waiting and starts to act.
Back to the Tarantino music collaborators guide.