Popular reviews

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  Review by Sean Baker 13

  Even though I may have seen this years ago in a dorm room on VHS tape, seeing the Film Movement Blu-ray of this restored classic was like watching the film for the first time.

  It is a must-see. Classic spaghetti western with a wholly unique approach - a snowy western. Without this film and Cut Throats Nine, there would be no Hateful Eight.

  From wiki: In March 2017, the Cinémathèque Française reported that Cineteca Nazionale, with the cooperation of Italian distribution rights holder Movietime, had authorised a complete restoration of The Great Silence (including the alternative ending) from the original camera and sound negatives in 4K resolution. The restoration was carried out at the film laboratories Augustus Color and Studio…

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  Review by Ian West ★★★★★ 5

  An unforgiving journey into the grim confines of ‘no hopesville’, this is Corbucci’s fully realized blizzard world of blurred morality, an ominous snow-swept frontier loaded with corruption, greed, despicable bounty hunters, a man called Loco, and a man named Silence. Beautiful, bleak, and unforgettable. 

  Corbucci’s masterpiece.

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  Review by Will Menaker ★★★★ 1

  Klaus Kinski's "Loco" is one of the coldest, most ruthless villains of all time. One of the coldest endings of a movie ever presents an allegory for the extermination of the Left in Italy and as Alex Cox said the idea that you can "only take on the powerful and the wicked for a short while, it seemed, before they crushed you."

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  Review by Colin the dude ★★★★½ 9

  Someone build a bronze statue of Klaus Kinski so I have something tangible to pray and worship to.

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  Review by Matt! ★★★★½ 6

  Ladies and gentleman, meet Silence. A man who is the master of instigation, truly deft at baiting others into conflict and eventual death. A “Master Baiter”, one might say.

  The Great Silence, widely considered Sergio Corbucci’s crowning achievement, is a stark condemnation of the hope and idealism of the mythic American West. A Spaghetti Western as cold and barren as the snowbound landscapes against which it tells its tale, this anti-fable is a dark, unforgiving saga of vengeance and justice (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) that features one of the most iconic villains in the history of the genre in the form of Klaus Kinski’s magnificently diabolical Loco. 

  Brutal and uncompromising, a small mountain town in Utah sees the…

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  Review by laird ★★★★★ 1

  Infinity: Avengers War

  "It's all within the law."

  Plenty of spaghetti westerns deal with the rippling effects of violent vengeance, but The Great Silence is something else, something heavier and colder and more malevolent. It's haunted. It's the ghost of all of the previous vengeance cycles, the blankets of snow its shroud, the sound of bullet casings hitting saloon floors its rattling chains. Its story is the prequel to a ghost town. A silent scream.

  It's hard watching it today not thinking of its relevance to current events. A crooked powerman looks a grieving widow in the eyes and shrugs at her cries of injustice. "Your husband broke the law. His death was his own fault." Starving, huddled masses considered outlaws by merciless bounty hunters, have to live outside of the town for fear of being taken down if they step foot in the wrong city. Life is cheap, but business is good if you lack humanity. Cold truth.

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★½ 5

  Action! - Spaghetti alla Sergio: Il West violentemente divertente di Corbucci

  Considered by many to be Corbucci's masterpiece, this is one of those films that proves that contrary to popular belief, the wheel can be reinvented - or at least improved upon. Corbucci's depressing vision of the Western genre and the world at large was certainly a breath of fresh air in a genre that had grown stale and hackneyed. The story takes place just before the Great Blizzard of 1899, which is fitting as our villains and even our hero, between whom lies a razor's edge of difference, are all characterized by ruthlessness and despair.

  Another aspect that makes this film appealing is the different kinds of analyses that…

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★★½ 24

  Any hope for a gentler world is crushed beneath drifts of mountain snow in Sergio Corbucci’s “The Great Silence.”

  It’s tempting to call the alpine setting of “Silence” a type of purgatory — where acts of extreme damnation or deification are the tolls of passage through. But purgatoires are in-between places. Waystations of judgement. 

  The mountains of Corbucci’s masterpiece are, rather, nothingness. Whiteness fades into the blankness of the horizon, and there is no end to absence. 

  The film is so stark in its plotting, it may as well be a parable, rather than an allegory, as Corbucci intended. But it’s not the sort of parable you’re likely to hear from a preacher in church. It’s one to fill the…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★½

  "What times we live in!"

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★½ 1

  A western as much for our time as its own, presenting the myths of the Old West as nothing more than a murderous farce that will immolate us all.

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  Review by Timcop ★★★★½

  If you look up "Fuck You" in the dictionary, there's a poster for this movie as an example.

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 7

  "The law has a right to kill."

  Grotesque political nihilism. The Great Blizzard of 1898 has thrown the small Utah town of Snow Hill on hard times, but rather than help those forced by circumstance to steal in order to survive, the government puts out rewards on the heads of the unfortunate thieves. A mute gunslinger (Jean-Louis Trintignant) comes to the aid of the peasants, but the fearful ruling class hires a gang of ruthless bounty hunters led by the heartless killer known as Loco (Klaus Kinski) to cleanse Snow Hill of its supposed impurities. Two immortal performers embodying two essential extremes. The epitome of frontier justice: the ethical outlaw vs. the dishonorable lawman. Morality forced outside the bounds of…