Hush of Death (The Great Silence (DVD))

Member Name: berlioz II

Product:	The Great Silence (DVD)
Date:	01/04/09 (113 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An utterly wonderful film, a true experience of great artistic fortitude

Disadvantages: Dubbing at times, but really nothing else

Sergio Corbucci was a director who most certainly defied the status quo quite a bit with some of his films. Never was he really a top tier director, and a lot of his production is strongly in the B-movie category, but he was also one who could be exceptionally good if the mood struck him. Should he have been a bit more judicious with some of his projects, his standing would most likely be a lot better today than what it is. Being primarily remembered for his violent and cynical spaghetti westerns, the mark he left on the genre is indisputable, even if he didn't always hit the ball out of the park, and most of the time he really could be rather brave in bucking a lot of conventions expected from movies like this in general. The late 1960s were the highlights of his career, and it was at that time that he also made his very best films. Among these movies was arguably the one film of his that can without hesitation be called a masterpiece on almost every level, not only limited to the western genre: Il Grande Silenzio aka. The Great Silence. Coming out in 1968, The Great Silence is a film that is unusual in many ways from the established norm. The film tells of the cutthroat life of bounty hunters in the still untamed territory of Utah during the 1899 Great Blizzard. It is another one of Corbucci's highly cynical and pessimistic worlds where common decency is suspect and hard to find, where ruthless people are the only ones that can survive, while everybody else suffers as a consequence. To this world comes a new sheriff played by Frank Wolff, bent on bringing the law into the town of Snow Hill, and away from the hands of the bounty hunters. However, he has his work cut out for him as the bounty killers are not about to let their profiteering on human corpses be taken away from them.

The film has Corbucci in a particularly deep mood, and there are several political and sociological subtexts to the story. Corbucci was a Communist and The Great Silence reflects his political standings heavily, as well as his disappointment in the way the cause was going (particularly following the concurrent 1968 Paris student revolutions). The Great Silence has the bounty hunters act as the ones in charge of law and there's a great emphasis placed on how they always work within the boundaries of the law. It's okay to kill in self defence, and given that there is an option of "alive or dead" for the bounties, well... that just makes it a little simpler. The film features two types of bounty hunter. The first is Jean-Louis Trintignant's Silence, a man who is very much the archetypal quiet spaghetti western hero, only here taken to the extremes of not only being a quiet guy, but in fact being mute due to him having had his throat slit when he was a child. Silence is an imposing character, one who doesn't over-state anything and has a very stoic presence that is only accentuated by his muteness. He is the honour bound heroic type, who hates bounty hunters, and never shoots anyone defenceless dead. Instead he rather shoots off the thumbs of his pray so that they can't shoot back. On the other side is Klaus Kinski's Tigrero (or Loco as his name is in the English dub). Tigrero is the opposite of Silence, and has no real common decency. He'll kill everybody because keeping his bounties alive is expensive and leaves the door open for too much risk. He continuously quotes about his rights to do what he does as he always stays just on the side of what is considered lawful. Tigrero is a psychopath who feels no remorse for anybody, and is very intelligent about not being caught doing something he isn't allowed to.

These two then end up as parables of the capitalist law and order that is maintained by the state's emphasis on property and not morality, which these bounty hunters represent. And this has in its turn left a group of Mormons to evacuate themselves to the surrounding wilderness as outlaws, just waiting to be given an amnesty so they could return once more to their old lives. Silence wants to help out the unjustly persecuted people, while Tigrero is simply interested in the profit. In these surroundings the new sheriff is confident in his own authority, but really is on a road to failure from the very start as his authority is only an illusion. In Snow Hill, Silence then meets Pauline (Vonetta McGee), whose husband has been gunned down because of the bounty set on his head, and thus hires Silence to kill the bounty hunter, Tigrero, as revenge. But of course Silence can't escape his own morality, and would only kill in self-defence, something that Tigrero is too smart to fall for. Thus Silence's actions are almost doomed from the very start, while a small love affair develops between him and Pauline, equally something that is doomed, for Silence cannot just turn his back and escape from his sense of duty. It is truly a grim outlook Corbucci was going for in this film and, unlike in some of his previous films, the sense of violence is tastefully regulated unlike in the almost wild abandon given to death in Django. It is a highly complex film, and Corbucci more than makes up for any of his past trashy violence with this truly affecting and quite tasteful story.

The acting also is of quite high a quality for a spaghetti western, particularly on the part of Klaus Kinski. Kinski was usually the type to play rather humorous bad guys, but with Tigrero he really rises to the occasion as a suavely nonchalant and intelligent man, but who quite clearly is a complete psychopath. His justifications to killing are so coldly logical and his personality is at the same time almost painfully likeable, that one is almost drawn to root him on despite being obviously a highly evil man. Also Frank Wolff's Sheriff Burnett is great with his deep distaste toward bounty hunters and taking what ever chance he gets to rid Snow Hill of such unsavoury personages with his brusque behaviour. Also there is Henry Pollicut, performed by Luigi Pistilli, the justice of peace at Snow Hill who is very much sympathetic toward the bounty hunters to maintain his hold on the handle of power, being another power-hungry individual plagued with his own vendettas and greed. To add to the brutality of the film's attitude toward life, the setting itself is perfect to accentuate the cold world by placing the action in the middle of snow filled vistas of Utah (the location shots were done at a ski resort in Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy) instead of the scorching deserts of Spain's Almeria. The vast snowfields are perfect to create a sense of impending death at every corner and the washed out, horizon-obliterated surroundings create a wonderfully surrealist atmosphere. What is also remarkable about the film is the utterly pessimistic and grim ending. Without giving anything away, Corbucci truly threw all the conventions of the genre to the dustbin in order to create a unique and sadistically original ending I've not seen very often. The outcome is surely one of the most shocking ones ever made and utterly destroys the old hero myths of the past. Incidentally Corbucci DID also end up shooting an alternate, "happy" ending for African markets, but it is quite ridiculous and was never seriously considered (nor does it contain any sound elements).

In many ways, The Great Silence is one of the most horrifying, profound, yet also strangely beautiful films I've ever seen. If Sergio Corbucci had never made another film, this would surely be enough to cement his reputation solid as a remarkable filmmaker when he was up to the task. The film is shot in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, which makes some of the vista shots seem a little unspectacular, but then again there really is no specific need to have this type of Leonesque widescreen format to make the most of the cinematography as it still looks extremely beautiful. The music was provided by Ennio Morricone, whose main theme is one of his most meltingly beautiful, while the other aspects of the score are more tense in style, save for an almost tragically desperate love theme in the middle of the film. In the end, The Great Silence is a wonderful film that has pretty much everything you need from a good film. Great acting, great and complex story, unexpected turns of events, a grim reality that is sure to make an impact, beautiful cinematography and music... the works. If one must say a negative it would have to do with the dubbing which, as according to Italian practice, was all done in post-production as movies were rarely shot with direct sound. Thus the voices tend to sound a bit disembodied, but on the whole both the Italian and English dubs work pretty well, even if there are some little changes in dialogue in the English one that can at times make significant changes to the intention of what is being said (thus I prefer Italian with subtitles). But The Great Silence is a film I'd warmly recommend to anyone, even if you're not a western fan, for this is truly a great film in every aspect, irrespective of genre, and one I'd wish was better known. A masterpiece, that stands right amongst Leone's ground-breaking counterparts.

© berlioz, 2009

Summary: Spaghetti Westerns Vol.9