THE GREAT SILENCE (Corbucci, 1968)

(Watched: sat/20221008 via Blu-Ray. Directed by Sergio Corbucci from a screenplay by Vittoriano Petrill, Mario Amendola, Bruno Corbucci and Sergio Corbucci; starring Jean Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski, Vonetta McGee, Frank Wolff and Luigi Pistilli. Released November, 1968.)

While I knew that if Wallace Stroby said it was good (as he did in our March conversation about my favorite film of all time, Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST) it would be, little did I expect to find myself engrossed in one of the most profound experiences of discovery I've had with a Western since, perhaps, OUATITW.

Snowbound, brutal, and utterly bleak: if Leone's works are singularly operatic love letters to the American Western signed by big kid with action figures, Corbucci's – especially here – are slices of neo-realist pulp (even in a movie about a guy with a gatling gun in a coffin) that dismantle all notions of convention and leave them thumbless across an unsparing landscape. Add Klaus Kinski as a sadistic bounty hunter and you've really got something to behold.

Side note: always a joy to see Frank Wolff (ill-fated in OUATITW as Brett McBain and in life, having committed suicide in 1971, at age 43) and Luigi Pistilli, familar – among other roles – to me as Tuco's monk brother in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.

Adding both a rewatch of Corbucci's DJANGO (saw it years ago) and a first watch of THE SPECIALISTS (the finale of Corbucci's "Mud and Blood" trilogy, with SILENCE being the second film in the unofficial sequence) to the list. Definitely one of those "I wish I could see it again for the first time" experiences.