Black and brown horses trot through the white mountain terrain. On the stagecoach ride Loco with a lethal tongue, the sheriff with a disdain for Loco, and the gunslinger with no vocal cords.
Our adventure is "The Great Silence" (1968), and it's my #6 movie of all time.
Most of us remember the snow globes we loved to shake when we were kids, right? Think of a snow globe brought to life--and that's what "The Great Silence" looks like.
However, let the viewer beware. Director Sergio Corbucci gives us a snow globe that's busted.
I think of Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) teaching kids and adults how to read and write in the John Ford classic, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962). There's no such hope in "The Great Silence" (1968).
We're treated to the grandeur of God's creation--but we're also taken to the depths of human depravity.
Quentin Tarantino says of Corbucci: "His West was the most violent, surreal, and pitiless landscape of any director in the history of the genre."
I agree. I think the Michael Cimino epic "Heaven's Gate" (1980) comes very close--but "The Great Silence" (1968) is as bleak as they get.
"Heaven's Gate"--a great, underrated film--was considered the American flop of the century in 1980. "The Great Silence" wasn't shown in an American theater until the next century.
British film director Alex Cox does a great DVD special feature, "Cox on Corbucci," and he's written a fun book on Italian Westerns, "10,000 Ways to Die" (2009). Cox says in the book, "'The Big Silence' is a unique work of art: it should have confirmed Corbucci's reputation, as a talent equal to Sergio Leone. But no one saw it."
Cox himself first saw it in France, where he was a teenage exchange student. Cox--who prefers to translate the Italian title ("Il Grande Silenzio") as "The Big Silence"--calls Corbucci's film "probably the greatest of all Spaghetti Westerns."
Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as Silence, the mute gunslinger who's been enlisted to fight for the people of Snow Hill. In a rare costarring role for a black woman in a Western, Vonetta McGee excels as Pauline Middleton, the young widow who vows revenge for the murder of her husband. Luigi Pistilli plays Henry Pollicut, the usurer who finances the oppression of the people, and Frank Wolff plays Sheriff Burnett, who's been sent by the governor of Utah to bring order to Snow Hill.
The best performance is turned in by Klaus Kinski as Loco, the bounty hunter who leads the bad guys. Loco isn't easily rattled, and his countenance says, "Don't tread on me."
I think of my favorite Western, Sergio Leone's "For a Few Dollars More" (1965). Leone's bounty hunters--The Man in Black (Lee Van Cleef) and The Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood)--kill for money and for justice. In "The Great Silence" (1968), Corbucci tells a different tale. The bounty hunters--Loco and his gang--kill for money and for the love of murder.
Corbucci (born 1926) and Leone (born 1929) grew up under Mussolini's dictatorship. They were in their teens when Hitler occupied Italy in 1943. The Sergios' generation loved American Westerns when they were kids. When they started making their own movies in the 1960s, however, they thought most American Westerns were overly optimistic and too sentimental. Leone is credited with taking the Western in a darker direction. Corbucci took it further.
"The Great Silence" (1968, color) is the most visually gorgeous film I've ever seen. Others are certainly in a class with it: Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane" (1941, black and white); Howard Hawks's "Red River" (1948, black and white); John Ford's "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949, color); Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" (1958, color); and Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" (1975, color).
In lamenting the decline of Corbucci's career in the 1970s, Cox says of "The Great Silence" (1968): "Corbucci had striven to be original, to try some radical new things. He had succeeded, quite remarkably."
I couldn't agree more. I have to note two vital contributors: cinematographer Silvano Ippoliti, whose camera work in the Italian Alps gives us the scenery for Snow Hill, Utah; and composer Ennio Morricone, whose brooding, beautiful music is perfect for such a discordant film.
"The Great Silence" (1968) is a chiller, and it's my #6 movie of all time.
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Founded in 2002 as one of the first-ever subscription film services with its DVD-of-the-Month Film Club, Film Movement is now a North American distributor of independent and foreign films based in New York City. We have released more than 250 feature films and dozens of shorts culled from prestigious film festivals worldwide, including the Oscar-nominated films. Film Movement’s theatrical releases include American independent films, documentaries, and foreign art house titles. Our catalog includes titles by directors such as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Maren Ade, Jessica Hausner, Andrei Konchalovsky, Andrzej Wajda, Diane Kurys, Ciro Guerra and Melanie Laurent.
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Top reviews from other countries
Sergio
Il grande silenzio (edizione USA)
Reviewed in Italy on March 20, 2021
Sergio
Reviewed in Italy on March 20, 2021
Quello che invece vorrei sottolineare è l'ottimo riversamento video di questa edizione, uscita per il 50° anniversario della pellicola, superiore alla vecchia versione blu-ray tedesca della Alive ed inoltre rispetto a quest'ultima i titoli di testa sono quelli originali italiani (cosa che apprezzo sempre molto nelle edizioni straniere), mentre sul lato Audio siamo più o meno lì in entrambi i casi abbiamo un 2.0 lossless!
Presenti negli extra diversi documentari sul film in questione, su Corbucci e il western all'italiana in generale ed inoltre all'interno troviamo anche un libretto di descrizione della pellicola purtroppo per noi però solo in inglese, ma comunque gradevole da sfogliare se non altro per la presenza di diverse immagini del film!
Insomma se amate quest'opera (e se siete appassionati del genere non può essere altrimenti) questa è la migliore versione su disco presente attualmente in commercio, costa più delle altre ma ne vale sicuramente la pena!
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The Man With No Name
THE GREAT SILENCE. GREAT BLU-RAY.
Reviewed in Canada on August 1, 2018