| Regular readers of this column might have noticed my devotion to a certain twisted and nihilistic spaghetti western entitled Django (1966). It’s a dark, mud-caked masterpiece, far skuzzier than one might expect, and incredibly influential to the genre, at least in Europe. The film served as a grim slap in the face to the idealized mythology of the Old West, and remains an unforgettable experience.
After viewing Django for the first time several years ago, I was naturally interested in finding other similar films from director Sergio Corbucci. One of the first I heard of was The Great Silence (1968), although I didn’t get a chance to watch it until recently. It has been worth the wait, as well as the effort to track it down. The Great Silence is an outstanding film that will certainly appeal to fans of Django.
Corbucci lets us know right away that this is no ordinary western, and he does so with a simple visual trick – snow. No deserts here, nor windswept dusty flatlands – the setting is a frigid mountain community in Utah and the whole place is simply choked with deep-packed snow and ice. It’s not just for visual effect either – the entire story is rooted in the frigidly remote setting. The characters dress warmly and wrap their guns in scraps of fur to keep them from freezing. Dead bodies are kept perfectly preserved in the snow.
It’s a struggle just to survive in this harsh environment, particularly for a group of refugees (due to their relatively peaceful nature I hesitate to call them bandits) who must remain hidden in the wilderness, awaiting an amnesty that will allow them to return to civilization. In the meantime, the town is awash with scummy bounty hunters, ready to pounce on the refugees the minute they set foot in town. Exactly what crimes the refugees are wanted for isn’t exactly made clear, but the townspeople agree that they’ve done nothing particularly wrong – it’s possible that they’re simply a group of Mormons facing religious persecution.
Into this icy alpine purgatory rides Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a mute gunslinger with a grudge against bounty hunters. "They call him Silence, because wherever he goes, the silence of death follows," says one of the characters. In truth, Silence only kills in self-defence and even then he occasionally spares his opponents by only shooting their thumbs off so they can’t hold a gun. (Reading that back, I can see how it doesn’t really sound all that merciful. Still….) Silence’s carriage stops to pick up two passengers – comic relief Sheriff Burnett (Frank Wolff), stranded in the wilderness after the refugees ate his horse (!) and Loco (Klaus Kinski), the thoroughly evil but charismatic leader of the bounty hunters. The interplay of these three gunslingers figures heavily in the drama to come, and it’s interesting to watch them in their first scene together. The blustering sheriff tries hard not to appear like the ineffectual dunce he clearly is, while the charming Loco throws offhanded insults here and there, occasionally stopping the carriage to blithely pick up the bounty corpses he’s stashed in the snow. Silence, of course, stays quiet and unflappable throughout the trip.
Things get messy once Silence agrees to kill Loco at the request of Pauline (Vonetta McGee), a beautiful widow with a grudge. Meanwhile, Sheriff Burnett is determined to keep order in Snow Hill until the amnesty can be announced, at which point life will, presumably, be easier for everybody. Things build to an astonishing climax, along with a remarkable ending that was very unusual for westerns of the period.
Trintignant does a fine job in the non-speaking title role, expertly conveying the suffering and inner conflict of the character with his expressive eyes. Trintignant will be familiar to art house fans as the star of A Man and a Woman (1966); his more recent credits include the judge from Three Colours: Red (1994), and the voice of the brain-in-a-jar from The City of Lost Children (1995). Wolff is terrific as the bumbling sheriff who gradually becomes a hero before our eyes. His character has considerably more depth than first expected, as he stops worrying about appearing foolish and embraces the responsibility placed on him by the townsfolk. Kinski, of course, is mesmerizing as one of the most unforgettable villains ever to grace a spaghetti western. Looking into his eyes is like staring at the headlights of an oncoming truck. This guy is definitely my choice for scariest actor to be stuck in an elevator with.
Fantoma put out this DVD in 2004 and it still seems to be available, if hard to find. The disc includes a fine video interview with cult filmmaker Alex Cox, which the menu thoughtfully advises you watch after the film, as it contains spoilers about the film’s ending. (I wish more DVD features were this considerate!) There’s also a weird alternate ending that completely defies the tone and logic of the rest of the film. It’s a fascinating extra, showing just how far filmmakers sometimes go to make their films more palatable for certain restrictive markets. Corbucci and company never bothered recording sound for this alternate ending, (they knew they only wanted the "real" ending on the English prints) so you can play it with optional commentary by Cox, as he scratches his head over the bizarre implausibility of it all. Cox is an intelligent speaker who clearly loves the film and his own take on the spaghetti western genre, Straight to Hell (1987) is a personal favourite. I would have liked to have an entire feature-length audio commentary from him.
The DVD contains the English-dubbed audio track, which might put some viewers off, but shouldn’t. All Italian films of this vintage were shot without sound and dubbed later. |
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