The Great Silence (The Big Silence)

The Great Silence (or The Big Silence) is a 1968 Spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Corbucci and with a score by Ennio Morricone. Klaus Kinski plays Loco, the leader of the bounty hunters. The bounty hunters are targeting a group of remote townspeople who turned to robbery in a time of starvation. The townspeople hire a mute gunfighter called Silence to help them fight the bounty hunters while they wait for the governor to declare an amnesty. In this unusual film, the bounty hunters are the bad guys and the outlaws are the good guys. This is a wonderful surprise of a film. Never released theatrically in the U.S., it's a treat to see it now.

via youtube:



Fistful of Pasta opens with this:

THE GREAT SILENCE is Sergio Corbucci's magnum opus and is generally regarded as the best 'non-Sergio Leone' Spaghetti Western ever made. In fact, many armchair critics believe that this film is on par with ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and the 'DOLLARS TRILOGY'.

Spaghetti-Western.net says it is "recognized as one of the best westerns ever made" and says, "It’s one of those films that change a moviegoers life forever: once you wandered through the icy and lonely streets of Snow Hill, no western, no film will ever be the same." Rotten Tomatoes doesn't have a critics score, but the audience score is a quite respectable 85%.