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.

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

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.

"What times we live in!"

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

7.5/10
O filme parece que se foca só no acontecimento do massacre enquanto que seria realmente muito mais interessante se focasse na linha tênue que separava o cumprimento da 'lei' na época com o banditismo. Além disso, faltou desenvolver certos pontos da história (como o interesse romântico do protagonista) e, desse modo, o roteiro acaba tomando atalhos pra tornar o enredo mais interessante, atalhos esses que eu não achei nem um pouco atrativos e pode-se dizer que foram 'preguiçosos'.

A grim ride, but wow, what a beautiful looking move. I had wanted to see this for damn near a decade now, having read it was a visual influence for the winter scenes in Django Unchained (and eventually, more so, The Hateful Eight... dude is maybe a little too derivative of his influences, but at least he cites his work.), but it was hard to actually find a copy back then and I kind of forgot about. Glad I finally got to see it in HD though, truly something special.

I don't know what else to say, love the winter setting, the costume designs, the facial uniqueness of the entire cast and the use of... silence. And when it's not silent, the great Morricone score. Might be a new favorite western.

Damn

This film is a difficult watch. It explores the morality of its characters. The outlaws. The bounty hunters. The law. The governor. I had been wanting to see this for a few years now, and had an idea of what it was, but was not expecting it to be as effective as it is. The breathtakingly gorgeous scenery covered in snow is starkly contrasted by the grim reality of the dying west. The content is less spaghetti western, and more akin to what Sam Peckinpah did masterfully in The Wild Bunch. The characters propel the story forward with their own motives and reasons, for better or worse. The line loosely dividing good & evil is awfully blurry here, often obscured by gunfire. But when the smoke clears, there are some that become distinctly solidified.

Damn near perfect. One of the best westerns I’ve seen, hands down. 

Highly recommend picking up the Film Movement Blu-ray 📀

Damn what a bummer

Hadn’t seen The Great Silence in several years and I had forgotten how utterly bleak and vicious it was. Corbucci always found fascinating angles to explore in the genre; his frontier is one where the native american is the vengeful hero, where Confederate bastards can be protagonists. The Great Silence is his most topsy-turvy vision, even more so than Django’s decaying corner of the west. Outlaws are the desperate victims, bounty hunters the ruthless villains. The genre’s dust and mud are frozen under deep blinding snow. The law is not a bastion of civilization against a lawless frontier, but a corrupt sanction to justify murder, demonization, and profit. It’s telling that Corbucci structures the plot so that Silence’s law-bound gunslinging is both his shield and his downfall. 

The Great Silence remains one of the best and most gut-wrenching westerns, Corbucci at his most sadistic.