Il grande silenzio (1968) – the title of this film is translated both as “The Silent One” and as “The Great Silence” (The Great Silence) and both variants have their own meaning. Agreeing to participate in this unusual winter western, filmed in the Italian Dolomites in the winter of 1967, Trintignant (by that time, one of the most famous actors in French cinema) set only one condition – there would not be a single word in his role. And the scriptwriters of the tape, including its director Sergio Corbucci, coped with this difficult task above all praise.
By that time, Corbucci’s film portfolio already had one popular one, and over the years it became one of the masterpieces of the spaghetti western genre – Django with Franco Nero in the title role. Due to excessive cruelty, according to the perception of that time, this film was banned from showing in the UK and a number of other countries. There are also a lot of scenes in The Silent Man that provoke viewers to close their eyes, which was fundamental for Corbucci, who polemicized with the westerns of his great predecessors and contemporaries, in particular, with the tapes of John Ford and the dollar trilogy Sergio Leone, who turned this purely American genre into one of the most box-office-successful in the world box office. The theme of the triumph of violence and the desecration of justice, when everything is decided only by force of arms, and the law protects only the rich, for Corbucci, as a staunch adherent of leftist beliefs, was more important than cash calculations. And Corbucci was able to shoot a popular movie that made a big box office like no one else, let’s remember at least the super-comedies he shot later, “Bluff” with Celentano or “Senor Robinson” with Paolo Villaggio.
So, what is The Great Silence about? The time of action is reported in the opening credits of the film — this is the winter of 1898-99, when the entire territory of the USA, including the southern states (in one of which the action of the tape takes place) was covered by a weather anomaly, which went down in history as the “great blizzard”. People could not find food and earnings for themselves and were forced to get together in gangs that traded on the highways. Neither the government nor the local rich, who are represented in the film by Henry Pollikat (who once robbed and killed the defenseless himself) are not going to share what they have made at a critical moment. On the contrary, Pollikat, as a local judge, legalizes the shooting of poor people who have been forced to cross the line of the law.
And this sanctioned massacre is carried out for a decent reward by the so-called “bounty hunters”, whose ringleader is a certain Loco (whose nickname translates from Spanish as “psycho”). The role of this shooter, without any moral brakes, was embodied on the screen by one of the most outstanding actors who played madmen in world cinema, Klaus Kinski (who later brilliantly played the role of a conquistador looking for El Dorado in Werner Herzog‘s film Aguirre, the Wrath of God). Loko hides his live goods, which are turned into dead ones by well-aimed shots, in the snow in order to collect frozen trophies like furs and exchange them for bundles of dollar bills.
Those who have lost their relatives hope that a lone cowboy, the same Silent Man wandering in the snowy mountains for no reason, will be able to avenge them. However, the audience will understand the purpose of his wanderings when the flashback dream throws them into the childhood of the hero – perhaps this episode could have influenced a similar one in the absolute masterpiece of the spaghetti western genre “Once upon a Time in the Wild West” filmed a year later Sergio Leone. But the locals have almost no hope for the newly appointed sheriff in the God-forsaken town. This nice and decent man, who has no one to rely on in a society where the law has already been bought, and the townsfolk are intimidated to death, was played by Frank Wolf, one of the most sought-after American actors in Italian cinema of the late sixties. In The Great Silence, one can also see Christian overtones, because the images of the main opponents in the film clearly have iconographic references – the Silent Man to the images of Christ, and the Loco to the image of one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse from the famous engraving by Albrecht Durer. However, we will not develop this topic further, so as not to make spoilers for those who would like to get acquainted with this now classic film, which has revised the established stamps of the popular cinema genre.
“The Great Silence” was dedicated by its creator to the memory of several idealists who wanted to change the world and gave their lives for it – Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, fighters for the rights of the black population of the USA, Robert Kennedy, struck down by a bullet during the presidential race in June 1968, and Ernesto Che Guevara, brutally murdered in Bolivia in October 1967. Almost half a century later, Quentin Tarantino will make a worthy film offering to his favorite westerns and their creator by first shooting Django Unchained, and after that, The Disgusting Eight, referring viewers directly to The Great Silence, which will emphasize the participation of the great Ennio Morricone as composer, author of the soundtrack to the Corbucci film. And it is also worth noting that the image of the Silent Man created by Jean-Louis Trintignant was taken as a basis by the Belgian comics master Yves Svolfs when creating a series of graphic novels in the early 80s, transparently referring to the famous westerns of Sergio Corbucci by their names Durango.
