Spaghetti That Leaves a Bad Taste in Your Mouth: A Review of The Great Silence (1968)
If you are a movie buff, you are familiar with the concept of a “Spaghetti Western”—westerns made by Italian filmmakers that were generally shot in Spain using American actors in the lead roles and European actors in the supporting roles, with their dialogue dubbed into English for U.S. Distribution. The four classics of the genre were all directed by Segio Leone, which are:
•
A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964)•For a Few Dollars More (1965)
For a Few Dollars More (1965)•The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)•Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)All of the above are good and interesting, though the last two are clearly the best, and can stand with the greatest Western movies of all time. There were many Spaghetti Westerns made in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but until recently I had only seen these four. On a recent internet list of the Greatest Spaghetti Westerns of all time, the first three are The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, and a For a Few Dollars More. After those, and ahead of A Fistful of Dollars (which I think is at least as good as For a Few Dollars More), is a movie by Sergio Corbucci called “The Great Silence.”
This had me intrigued.
I was especially intrigued when I saw that this movie has a 100% rating (!) on Rotten Tomatoes, which would indicate that it’s one of the greatest movies of all time, and not merely a great Western. I read also that Quentin Tarantino was very inspired by this movie. To top it off, Leonard Maltin, who I think is hands-down the greatest movie critic of all time (particularly since I agree with him completely 90 to 95% of the time) gives the film a rating of 31/2 stars out of 4, saying that the movie is a “brutal, bleakly beautiful spaghetti Western filmed on stark locations in the Dolomites, with one of the most uncompromising and unforgettable finales ever filmed.” Naturally, I was excited to see this film.
And then I saw it.
I would suggest that, based on the above critiques, this movie could be a strong competitor for the most overrated movie of all time. There are spoilers below, so beware.
Just to start off, consider this as a movie idea. There are a bunch of evil bounty hunters, going around killing men who have falsely had a bounty put on their heads by an evil capitalist. A heroic gunfighter, a newly-appointed Sheriff of great integrity, and the widow of a man ruthlessly murdered by the bounty hunters team up to stop the depredations of these nasty villains. And then, after a 105-minute setup, in a shocking surprise ending, all of the good guys are killed and the villains win. The End.
Sounds like a fun time at the movies, no?
But, you say, isn’t that like real life? Don’t the good guys often lose, and the bad guys often win in real life?
We’ll examine that concept below, but first let me start by commenting on what is good about the movie.
Most Westerns, and especially Spaghetti Westerns, take place in a relatively bleak desert landscape. This Western, on the other hand, takes place entirely in the mountains in a snowy winter setting (the Italian Dolomites stepping in for Utah). The setting is unique and fascinating, and there are several long beautiful shots of men riding their horses through thick snow. I am embarrassed to say I have never yet seen Cheyenne Autumn (though I have seen more than 20 other movies directed by John Ford) and I’ve seen snow scenes in other westerns such as The Searchers and The Rare Breed, among others, but this is mostly a beautifully shot movie and is the most thoroughly snowbound Western I have ever seen.
Another plus is the score by famed composer Ennio Morricone, and I do have to give credit to Klaus Kinski’s performance as Loco, a polite, mealy-mouthed, and utterly sadistic villain.
So, what’s wrong with the movie?
The movie stars out with our protagonist, a mute gunman nicknamed “Silence,” riding through an open field in the snow. Unfortunately for him, there are a few rifle-toting gunmen hiding in the brush nearby, bounty hunters ready to shoot him down in an ambush. Fortunately for him, he suddenly senses this, and pulls out his pistol and shoots and kills all the bad guys. Forget, of course, that they have both rifles and cover to hide behind and he has neither—he’s obviously unbelievably skilled with his pistol, and I do mean unbelievably. Speaking of which, his pistol is not a revolver, but a German Mauser semi-automatic, which research indicates was not produced until 1896, meaning the timing of this movie is 1898 or 1899. Perhaps you will think me overly scrupulous when I question how in 1898 this wandering gunman of Utah has acquired a European pistol, and wonder further where he gets his ammunition. I can picture him riding up to some lonely trading post and asking to buy more bullets, and after being offered .45, .40, or .22 caliber, he wonders if they have anything in the metric system they might sell him. Of course, he can’t really ask this, because he can’t speak, so I suppose he’d have to write it down. This leads us to another oddity of the film, namely the muteness of the hero.
We learn early on that “Silence” hates the evil bounty hunters, and goes around killing them, always first making sure that they draw first. But why does he hate these bounty killers so much (beyond the fact that they are obvious villains)? We eventually learn in a not-very-stylish flashback that when Silence was a boy, bounty killers came and shot his whole family. They left him alive (for no apparent reason) but, concerned that he might “talk,” they cut his throat, apparently expertly cutting his vocal cords in the process. These bounty hunters seemed rather reckless and haphazard when they shot his family, but apparently they can cut throats with surgical precision. This flashback somewhat mirrors the flashback at the end of Once Upon a Time in the West, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between the revelation in Once a Time in the West and the revelation in this movie is the difference between Lightning and a Lightning Bug. Also, our protagonist, who seems a little wimpy without his unusual pistol handy, provides no competition to Charles Bronson. At any rate, this explains our mute hero (sort of).
Meanwhile another character is introduced, a war veteran who the Governor of Utah taps to be the sheriff in the town of Snow Hill, in order to clean up the mess there caused by the overly-aggressive bounty hunters. The Sheriff is a somewhat comical character, who gets stopped by the outlaws of the mountains (who are really the good guys), and they take his horse from him so they can have something to eat. By the way, these outlaws tend to talk very fast with lots of hand gestures, so that even if they were speaking in English you might suspect them of being a group of wandering Italians in disguise.
While travelling to Snow Hill by stagecoach, the new Sheriff meets Silence (who he thinks is rude for not speaking) and the leader of the bounty hunters, the appropriately-named Loco. Loco arrives in town and promptly murders the local negro to get the bounty. He coldly shoots this man in front of his wife, who then vows revenge on the bounty hunters. She subsequently hires Silence to kill Loco, and though she says her husband was a good man who she loved deeply, her days of mourning are remarkably abbreviated, as she’s not averse to having a sex scene with Silence, who she clearly hasn’t fallen for because of his personality, because he hasn’t said anything, and has only written a few words on a piece of paper. This woman is referred to as a “negro” and lusted after by the town capitalist, whom she has utterly rejected in favor of Silence, although, as a point of interest, the actress is clearly biracial and looks very much like a darker-skinned version of Claudia Cardinale, the female protagonist of the aforementioned Once Upon a Time in the West.
Meanwhile, our Sheriff learns that Silence is mute rather than rude, and engages him in a shooting contest involving tossing potatoes into the air and shooting holes in them (a little extravagant when all the people of the mountains outside the town are starving). We learn that Silence and the Sheriff are both amazing shots, although the Sheriff’s amazing skills serve no purpose, as he never uses them in the rest of the movie.
Eventually, Silence confronts a group of bounty hunters in the saloon, but Loco, knowing that Silence will never shoot first, refuses to draw his gun and simply walks up and starts to beat Silence up. Finally, Silence is able to grab a piece of wood and knock Loco out of the saloon, at which point Loco’s bounty hunter friends foolishly draw their guns and Loco kills them all. The Sheriff, who has meanwhile developed a slight romantic interest in one of the ladies of the town, finally realizes that Loco is a bad guy and puts him in jail for murder (I’m a little confused as to which murder he’s jailed for, but nonetheless…)
The Sheriff decides to ride with Loco to Tonopah where he will be hanged. Since Tonopah is hundreds of miles away in Nevada, across a desert no less, and they are in the newly-established state of Utah, he should be taking him to Salt Lake City, but I suppose this qualifies as a minor quibble. I do wish screenwriters would do just a slight amount of research before starting work, however.
As they ride, they encounter the group of men who have been falsely accused of being criminals and have been hunted down by the bounty hunters. The Sheriff tells them that he has ordered food to be set out for them in Snow Hill, and that they will soon get a pardon from the Governor. They believe him and head toward Snow Hill, while the Sheriff and Loco continue on their way to Tonopah (!) so that Loco can be hanged.
I have already described several absurd scenes, but the next one is the ultimate.
The Sheriff and Loco, who is handcuffed, ride away through the snow toward Tonopah. At a certain point, Loco tells the Sheriff that he really needs to “take a dump,” and asks the Sheriff to take his handcuffs off so he can do his business. The Sheriff obliges, and then walks about ten yards ahead, apparently so Loco can have some privacy. Loco bends down, as if about to “take a dump,” but actually a rifle has been hidden in the snow right where he is pretending to do his business! He uncovers the rifle, cleans it off, and then points it at the Sheriff. The Sheriff turns around (with pistol still holstered, naturally) and sees he’s been tricked! He warns Loco not to shoot him and Loco doesn’t, because as it happens that the Sheriff is standing on the ice of a frozen lake, and Loco simply shoots the ice and the Sheriff falls into the freezing water. Loco then rides off to gather up the rest of the bounty hunters for an attack on the falsely accused criminals at Snow Hill.
How stupid is this scene? Let us count the ways.
First, presumably the chain of the handcuffs would be designed to be long enough for a person to unbutton and pull down his pants, however awkwardly.
Second, Loco has a rifle cleverly hidden in a snowdrift. It might not have occurred to him that if the sun ever came out for a number of days the rifle would be exposed, or if there’s another snowstorm the rifle might be buried four feet deep. And, of course, how does he know that the Sheriff will take them exactly by the one spot in the entire mountain range where he has hidden a rifle, and that the Sheriff will actually be willing to stop at that exact spot so he could go to the bathroom. Also, even though the rifle is wrapped up in cloth, I am skeptical about how well it would function being left out in the snow for however many days.
Third, Loco asks the Sheriff to take off his handcuffs so he can “take a dump.” The Sheriff goes right ahead and does this, though neither I nor any sane person would ever do the same, and of course if I was the Sheriff I would just tell him to hold it until we came to a place where I felt like stopping.
Lastly, of course, after untying the handcuffs the Sheriff walks about ten yards in front of Loco and turns his back to him, apparently being so daintily polite that he will not watch his prisoner “do his duty.” To top it off, he chooses to stand ten yards ahead of Loco on a frozen lake! No person, not even one of spectacular stupidity, would ever do any of these things. Once you are stupid enough to take the handcuffs off, you would never let him out of your sight, and would stand behind him rather than in front of him with your back to him, and, of course, you would not choose to stand on a frozen lake.
It's interesting to note that we do not see the Sheriff killed. Instead, we see him falling into the frozen lake. Like all true villains in comic books, Loco does not stay to make sure the Sheriff is dead, but rides away without shooting or stealing the Sheriff’s horse. To sharp-witted viewers these details might seem significant at the time, but actually they’re not.
In any event, Loco rides to a cabin where he meets up with another group of bounty hunters, and they ride to Snow Hill, and capture all the good guys of the mountain rather easily, who rather passively allow themselves to be tied up in the saloon.
Meanwhile, Silence has been injured in a fight with the evil capitalist and his henchman. The evil capitalist tries to rape our heroine, but the screenwriter is gracious enough to the audience to allow Silence to be able to kill the evil capitalist and his henchman. But now, with all the other bounty hunters in town, Silence must make a classic Western choice; should he run off with the beautiful widow, or face down the bounty hunters single-handed? In true heroic fashion, he decides to confront them, despite the pleadings of the beautiful widow for them to run away together.
Meanwhile, the Sheriff’s potential girlfriend gets a revolver and takes a shot at Loco, but only succeeds in shooting his hat off. Loco then says to his fellow bounty hunters, “Well, you all saw that she shot at me first,” and then he shoots and kills the woman, depriving the Sheriff (if he’s still alive) of his potential love interest. The absurdity of this scene is of, course, that she stops shooting after taking a single shot, and that Loco, who has come within inches of being killed, feels the need to make a speech before shooting back.
Finally, Silence heads to the saloon, where all the good men of the mountains are tied up as prisoners, to face the bounty hunters. As he walks up to the saloon, one of the bounty hunters shoots out of a window with his rifle and hits Silence in the shooting hand. Now, what will Silence do? Well…he does nothing. In fact, Loco then shoots him in the head, killing him. When he falls, the widow cries out “No!” and runs to him and Loco shoots and kills her too. Then, with no one to rescue them, the good men tied up in the saloon cry out “No! No!” but the bounty hunters shoot and kill every one of the bound prisoners in an extended bloodbath. Then, Loco smirks at Silence, looks at his unusual gun, and then all the bounty hunters walk away. Fortunately for the sensibilities of the audience, a subtitle (!) tells us that because of this massacre the bounty hunters were finally put out of business by the government. And then the movie ends.
I can agree with Leonard Maltin that this movie has one of the most “unforgettable finales ever filmed.” It is certainly unforgettable, but is it any good?
I can’t imagine anyone enjoying seeing the smarmy, sadistic Loco win out in the end and not get his comeuppance, and also to see all the characters we’ve empathized with get killed to very little purpose. I think some people might like the ending solely because of the unexpected and excessive violence (raise your hand, Quentin Tarantino!). But, you argue, isn’t it true that in real life the good guys don’t always win, and sometimes the bad guys do? I have two arguments against this.
First, this is not real life. In fact, as pointed out above, the movie consists of one absurdity after another, so the claim that the bad guys win because that’s “true to life” falls completely flat. Ther’s very little in the movie that’s “true to life.” We can appreciate it as a movie to some degree, but, as it is a movie, we know that everything we see is fake and manipulated, with Italian and German actors pretending to be Americans thousands of miles from America. If I may paraphrase Doctor Samuel Johnson in his famous (among English majors) Preface to Shakespeare, his response to a popular argument of the time against Shakespeare’s play Othello is relevant. In this play, the first act takes place in Venice, but the rest of the play takes place in Cyprus. Earlier critics of the 18th century universally said that this was absurd, because, according to the classical rules, plays should always take place in one location, and no one can just jump from Venice to Cyprus in a moment. Doctor Johnson points out the absurdity of this argument. He tells us that no drama was ever credible, and no drama was ever credited. Even though the play says we’re in Venice, we all know we’re in a theater, and if it says we just moved to Cyprus we can imagine that we're in Cyprus just as easily as we imagined we were in Venice. We can enjoy the play because we have a willing suspension of disbelief, and apply our imaginations to what we see. The argument that The Great Silence ending is good because it’s “true to life” is false, because the movie itself is not real life, and is only a false shadow of real life, with 20th century Italian actors pretending to be 19th century Americans, and we never believe at any time that we are watching “real life.” We always know that what we are watching is being controlled by filmmakers, and not by “real life.”
Another point I can make along these lines is by Alfred Hitchcock, a director clearly several rungs higher than Sergio Corbucci. In his 1936 movie Sabotage, he has a terrorist surreptitiously place a time bomb in a package that he gives to a young boy. The terrorist then tells the boy he needs him to deposit the package at a subway station. We viewers know that the bomb will go off at a certain time, but the boy dawdles on his way to the station, creating agonizing suspense, and when he finally gets on a bus to go to the subway station the bomb goes off and he and everyone on the bus are killed. A powerful scene, and yet years later Hitchcock said he felt it was a mistake. He said he should have figured out a way to get the boy out of danger at the last moment, because he (Hitchcock) was the one who put him in danger in the first place, and so he was cheating the audience not to rescue him. The same principle applies to this film.
Secondly and finally, I do not concede that the bad guys winning is “true to real life.” It happens sometimes, for a while, but I generally find that those who do bad things have bad things happen to them, sooner or later. In fact, it’s inevitable. God is not mocked.
By the way, once Darryl Zanuck, the head of 20th Century Fox, saw how this movie ended he was so appalled he refused to release the film in the United States, so its original release was only in Europe. In light of this critique, a “happy ending” was filmed but never released. In this ending, Loco draws his gun on Silence but is suddenly shot by the Sheriff, who has survived his fall into the frozen lake, and then Silence kills all the other bounty hunters. This ending is not exactly “tacked on,” because it’s well set-up by the fact that Loco doesn’t actually shoot the Sheriff, he doesn’t stay to see what happens to the Sheriff after he falls into the lake, and he doesn’t shoot or steal the Sheriff’s horse.
The “happy ending” might possibly be corny in some respects (I have not seen it), but the criticism that it’s bad because it’s inconsistent with the horrific aspects of the rest of the film rings hollow. Having a bad guy do horrific things throughout a film and then have him get defeated/killed in the end is standard practice in films that acknowledge the concept of justice and wish to actually please their audiences. The horrific things that they do make the “happy ending” even more satisfying.
Overall, this is a foolish film with some beautiful photography, inconsistent directing, poor scripting, and unimpressive acting, with the exception of Klaus Kinski.
There are a lot of people who disagree with me apparently—I don’t recommend the movie, but if you’re really curious you should check it out for yourself and see if you agree with me.
