When it comes to the Italian western aka the spaghetti western, the first director who comes to mind is Sergio Leone (The Good The Bad And The Ugly); and then there is Sergio Corbucci.  While Leone was blazing a successful career, Corbucci first came onto the scene with his film Django. The film was dirty, violent, and mean.  For those who are only familiar with the Quentin Tarantino version of Django, well, you’ll definitely see the films are drastically different aside from them both being revenge films. Much later on Corbucci got the chance to follow up his first big hit with another western, The Great Silence. I had gotten to see this dark western before, though it was in the form of a bootleg copy. There was a lot of grain, and the ending attached to the film was radically different from the one Corbucci had intended.  Film Movement Classics has done an amazing job at cleaning this title up and giving it a new 2K restoration. As for the film itself, saddle up, because this is like something many have not seen before.

One of the first striking things you will notice about this western is that it is mostly filmed in the cold and in the snow. We meet Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant) as he is jumped by a group of bounty hunters whom he quickly dispatches, and when one surrenders himself, Silence manages to shoot off the man’s thumbs.  That’s the thing about Silence that’s pretty cool. He kills in self-defense but seems to enjoy crippling bounty hunters so they won’t be able to kill again.  We later get to find out just why Silence has it out for bounty hunters, but also the grisly reason why he’s been given the name Silence.