A Cult Classic ‘Snow Western’ -Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence (Il Grande Silenzio)

I first saw Sergio Corbucci’s cult 1968 spaghetti Western The Great Silence thanks to a BBC2 Moviedrome screening in 1990. Introduced by film-maker Alex Cox, these late-night wonders, often shown in double-bills, were a film buff’s dream.  Focussing on cult films, underrated gems, forgotten masterpieces, and the downright weird, it’s a sad fact that there’s little chance of a mainstream broadcaster ever again having the courage to programme a film season such as Moviedrome, and allowing it to find its smallish yet devoted audience.

Original 1968 Japanese B2 Poster for The Great Silence

A sub-genre of Western films produced in Europe, usually co-productions shot in Italy or Spain, spaghetti Westerns emerged in the mid-late 1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's international box-office success with the Dollars Trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) starring Clint Eastwood. The term ‘spaghetti’ simply refers to the fact that most of these films were produced and directed by Italians.

The Great Silence had never before been shown in the UK, so it had a special fascination for me. Already a fan of Leone, especially Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), I was interested in seeing anything by Corbucci, another major director of Westerns such as Django, and Navajo Joe (both 1966).

French star Jean-Louis Trintignant, in his only Western role, plays the titular mute gunman (‘Silence’) who joins a rural community of outcast criminals in fighting a gang of bounty hunters led by the vicious ‘Loco’ (Klaus Kinski, born to play this role!). Set during a freezing Utah mid-winter (although actually filmed in the mountain landscapes of the Italian Dolomites) the film pushes against and subverts many familiar Western conventions. Bleak and brilliant, with compelling characters, the moral of the story is best summed up by Alex Cox’s comment that "sometimes, even though you know you'll fail, you still do the right thing”.

The film was a big favourite of Quentin Tarantino, who paid homage to it in Django Unchained and The Hateful 8. Tarantino’s cinematographer on the latter, Robert Richardson, has stated that the widescreen snowscapes and settings of The Great Silence were a direct inspiration for the look of Tarantino’s film.

Ennio Morricone’s melancholic, evocative music score was said to be his favourite outside of those he composed for Leone’s films, and he also composed the score for The Hateful 8.