aka Il Grande Silenzio
If Sergio Leone had never made a Spaghetti Western, Sergio Corbucci would be the best director of the genre. Of course, Leone did make westerns, and they were brilliant, and not many people would even know whom Sergio Corbucci is if there never was a Sergio Leone…but you get my point. Corbucci made great westerns, but it’s hard not to compare any Spaghetti Western director to Leone, so I’m going to put Leone out of mind for now so I can take some time to focus on the brilliance of Corbucci, and his masterpiece, THE GREAT SILENCE.
Corbucci made a ton of great westerns back in the heyday of Italian cinema in the 60’s and 70’s. Earlier in his career, like a lot of his peers, he made schlocky musclemen movies like SON OF SPARTACUS and GOLIATH AND THE VAMPIRES, but after the success of Leone’s A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, I believe Corbucci found his calling because although I’ve seen only a few of his non-westerns, non of them have matched his work in the western genre. The list is quite impressive, starting with the classic, DJANGO (1966) all the way to SHOOT FIRST…ASK QUESTIONS LATER (1975), in my opinion he never made a bad western…some are flawed and are not on the same grand scale as the other Sergio, but all are entertaining re-tellings of the old west non the less. I could go on and on about films like THE HELLBENDERS, THE MERCENARY, THE SPECIALIST, and COMPANEROS, but I should probably focus on THE GREAT SILENCE, a film that quite a few fans of the genre call the best Spaghetti Western of all time…I wouldn’t go that far, but it would certainly make the Top 5. Again, if Sergio Leone never made westerns—THE GREAT SILENCE probably would be the greatest of all time. So much for putting Leone out of mind, but damn it’s hard to talk about an Italian westerns and not bring him up.
THE GREAT SILENCE stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as the lead character, Silence. Trintignant is a French actor, whom I’ve not had the privilege of seeing in anything else. For a role that requires no dialogue, he still does a hell of a job (the role was intended for Franco Nero, but Nero was busy with another project at the time). I have to be honest though and admit that the main strength of this film comes from Klaus Kinski. Kinski plays the villainous bounty hunter, Loco, and although I’ve not seen every movie Kinski has ever done, I’ll go out on a limb and say this one of his best performances. Of course this was the peak of Kinski’s career, that stretched from the late 60’s to the mid-70’s with films like this one, and a bunch of other great westerns and horror flicks, not to mention the cult classic, AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD. There is something to be said about an actor when the villain is the best part of a movie. I would have loved a series of films that followed the further exploits of “Loco” to have followed this one. Oh well.
The film takes place in 1898 (at the cusp of “old west”) in Utah, during what was known as “the great blizzard”. Yes, that means the whole film takes place in the snow—that in it self is refreshing, as most westerns seem to take place in desert settings. The snow brings a sense of dissilience that brings a whole new element to the film, not to mention the wardrobes (thick warm jackets and furs) of the characters stand out among other westerns too.
The story, taking place in Utah, of course has to involve Mormons, and here a group of them are run out of town on trumped up charges so they can be tracked down by ruthless bounty-hunters (led by Kinski) so they can collect the bounties on their heads. The man behind the corruption is rich landowner named, Pollicut, played by one of my favorite genre actors, Luigi Pistilli (THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY among many others). The plot to collect the bounties on the men’s lives is paying off in spades until a new sheriff comes to town and at the same time a mysterious mute know only as Silence is making his presence known as well. Sheriff Burnett (played by comedic actor, Frank Wolff) is straight as an arrow and doesn’t buy into what the bounty-hunters or Pollicut are selling, especially since the men are wanted dead ‘or’ alive, yet are never brought in alive. Meanwhile, Silence is out the help the people who’s loved ones have been killed by the bounty hunters. Silence has a great back story showing how his parents were killed by a different, but just as ruthless set of bounty hunters when he was a child and how they slit his throat so he could never tell what he saw, which resulted in his vocal chords being cut.
Silence ends up befriending (then falling for) a black woman named Pauline, whose husband was killed by Loco for a bounty. She offers to pay him to kill Loco (as does an old woman who’s son was also killed by Loco), but when she tries to sell her home to Pollicut, he refuses, but says he’d pay her if she’d sleep with him—unable to give herself to the man who paid the bounty on her husbands life. Silence agrees to kill Loco anyways, but not before one of sexiest damn love scenes I’ve ever seen in a Spaghetti Western—and not in a gratuitous way, but in a very well filmed and sensuous way. The very beautiful Vonetta McGee (BLACULA, DETROIT 9000) plays Pauline and she is F.I.N.E.!
The film comes across as your typical revenge western, but Corbucci manages to pull the rug out from under the audience with a extremely downbeat ending. The ending was so downbeat that an alternate “happy ending” was filmed, but only showed in North Africa and parts of the states. While the original ending makes this film what it is and brings about a message of how violence only leads to more violence and that it’s just a vicious cycle (a ballsy message for the time), if the “happy ending” was the only ending, I still would have thought the film was great. With that I’m saying that I don’t think the ending is what makes the movie—it just makes the film more powerful.
What separates Corbucci’s films from the films of the great Sergio Leone is the fact that Corbucci is a sloppier director than Leone. Corbucci is a talented and great director, but lets face it, Leone was a genius. That being said, what I appreciate about Corbucci’s films is that it didn’t seem like he was trying to copy Leone—he made his own brand of western. With the exception of maybe COMPANEROS, most of Corbucci’s films don’t resemble Leone’s at all. The only reason I feel COMPANEROS seems Leone-esque is because it was a bigger production than Corbucci’s previous films, and there were more sweeping panoramic shots which were Leone was famous for, but…but it must be said that Leone’s DUCK, YOU SUCKER seemed to borrow a lot from COMPANEROS. So obviously each director was an influence on the other.
There’s not a whole lot to gripe about with this one with the exception of the dubbing, which as usual is pretty bad, but I’ve become so accustom to the bad dubbing for Spaghetti Westerns that I barely notice it anymore. I will say that the dubbed voice of Kinski is a little too comically dastardly and over-the-top. It should have been brought down a notch or two, but this is just a minor complaint.
Lastly, I couldn’t end this review without a heaping of praise for the score, written by my favorite composer of all time, Ennio Morricone and conducted by another one of my favorites, Bruno Nicolai. The score, even though penned by Leone’s staple musicman, is very different than any other Italian western scores before it. It’s as beautiful as Vonetta McGee and as haunting and cold as the winter setting of the film. In case I’m not being clear, an Ennio Morricone score in the hands of Bruno Nicolai = Brilliance!
If you've never seen a Spaghetti Western before, THE GREAT SILENCE would be a great place to start, and if you're already a fan, but have not seen it--get to it! It is packed full of...greatness.
