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The Great Silence More at IMDbPro »Il grande silenzio (original title)

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THE GREAT SILENCE (Sergio Corbucci, 1968) ***, 4 June 2006

Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta

Superior to DJANGO (1966), Corbucci's most popular work, this would probably be his best film; of the director's more renowned Spaghetti Western efforts, I've also watched COMPANEROS (1970) and would most like to catch up with A PROFESSIONAL GUN (1968).

The script is denser than your average Western, if not nearly as ambitious as the contemporaneous Sergio Leone films; it's also interesting to note the dual meaning of the title: Jean-Louis Trintignant's character has been nicknamed Silence (since he's a mute) but it also refers to his unfailing skill as a gunslinger - bringing silence, i.e. death, wherever he passes. The main actors all deliver terrific performances - Trintignant is one of the most interesting heroes in the entire "Spaghetti Western" subgenre (apparently, Marcello Mastroianni was the original choice!), Klaus Kinski (ditto where villains are concerned; his foppish bounty hunter here is surely the most significant of the actor's many forays in the field), Vonetta McGee (unusual for any type of Western to feature a black woman in the lead, and the same goes for her interracial love scene with Trintignant!), Frank Wolff and Luigi Pistilli (whose character is tied with Trintignant's backstory, Leone-style, though this element isn't revealed gradually here - which perhaps weakens its impact in the long run!).

Ennio Morricone's score didn't seem all that impressive while I was watching the film, being subtler than usual for the maestro, but emerges as undeniably haunting in retrospect. The forbidding snowy landscape (also the setting of two largely unsung, and equally unusual "Hollywood" Westerns, William A. Wellman's TRACK OF THE CAT [1954] and Andre' De Toth's DAY OF THE OUTLAW [1959]) is surely one of the film's trump cards. While not excessively graphic, there is here some pretty nasty means of violence (throat slashing, thumbs shot off) and the remarkably nihilistic conclusion has to be one of the most unexpected - and powerful - in all Westerns; whereas the hero would normally suffer mightily at the hands of the bad guys only to re-emerge like an angel of death unleashing bloody retribution, this doesn't occur here...and that's all I'm going to say about the finale! As a means of countering foreign markets' eventual protests at the film's downbeat curtain, an alternate "happy ending" was devised: thankfully, it's been preserved (not the dialogue, though) and is included on the DVD; silly in itself, if anything it makes for an interesting comparison with the original. I opted for Eureka's R2 edition over Fantoma's slightly more bountiful disc due to the availability here of the Italian-language version.

I had recently watched two minor Corbucci Westerns - MASSACRE AT GRAND CANYON (1965) and THE HELLBENDERS (1969) - and should be following this with RINGO AND HIS GOLDEN PISTOL (1966), as well as a whole slew of other examples from the genre.

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