The Great Silence (Il Grande Silenzio) (1968)
Catching up with this one, considered the ultimate, greatest of all 'Spaghetti Westerns' is long overdue.
Greatest? Ultimate? We're not given to gross hyperbole here at BQ, so let's leave it at this.....Sergio Corbucci's film stands proudly and equally next to Sergio Leone's 'Dollars' trilogy and 'Once Upon A Time In The West'.
And most distinctly stands apart from those films in its unique, unforgiving landscapes of snowy hills and mountains, and its bleak nihilistic finale, designed to make you lose the will to live when you're done watching it.
We're in 1898 Utah (replicated by Nothern Italy's Cortina amid the Dolomite mountains). In the ramshackle, hole-in-the-wall town of Snow Hill, bounty hunters regularly collect reward money for shooting down outlaws, regardless of the severity of their offences. As the bodies pile up in the snow drifts, corrupt banker Pillicut (Luigi Pistilli) doles out the reward cash while amassing his own fortune.
The worst among them is the cold hearted, reptilian 'Loco' (who else but Klaus Kinski), who heads into town to rack up his own high corpse count.
But the bane of their existence is the mute, lethal gunslinger 'Silence' (Jean-Louis Trintingnant), who provokes the bounty killers into fast draw duels that don't end up well for them. So early on, you know this film's on its way to a titanic clash-of-the-killers.
Two other major characters wade into the bullet-riddled chaos here......the hapless new Sheriff (Frank Wolff), foolishly thinking he can restore a modicum of law and order, and emotionally wounded (and widowed) Pauline (Vonetta McGee, before moving back to the U.S. to become a blaxsploitation star). Loco murdered Pauline's husband, so she's willing to pay Silence 1000 dollars for a vengeful execution.
With the spectacular frigid scenery as a backdrop, director Corbucci orchestrates a haunting, grandly operatic tragedy which leaves almost all of the major characters dead in the forever falling snow, as depressing an ending as you're ever likely to see in a film.
Mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, who distributed the film in Europe, recognized its singular brilliance among Italian westerns, but judged it too gut-wrenching to release in the U.S. (It finally made its way to America via DVD in 2001.)
Powered by a typically vivid memorable Ennio Morricone score, 'The Great Silence' remains one hell of a visual feast and the most desolate, grim cinematic experience guaranteed to leave you gaping and stunned. (You can easily see how much this film inspired Quentin Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight').
No bowl of cherries to sit through, but all buffs shouldn't miss it. 5 stars (*****).
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