•
Rating: A singular director, capable of traversing through the most varied genres, with dizzying highs and lows, Sergio Corbucci expressed in the western an aspect of his artistic personality unique in the international landscape of the genre. The year 1968 marked the maturity of the Italian western; the works of this genre produced up until then, starting from the fateful 1964, were countless, and the exhaustion of the golden thread, though on the horizon, remained hidden.
In 1968, Leone created, in collaboration with Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci, his most mature film, the cumbersome yet fascinating "Once Upon a Time in the West", a calling card for foreign markets of a local "high" production. In the same year, Corbucci brought to fullness that microcosm of themes that characterized his way of seeing frontier stories, initiated with "Django". Where Leone was sunny, barren, and vital, in the other Roman director, we find mud, rain, despair.
In this film, snow is even the cruel protagonist; an anomaly in our western, so tied to Leone and that “southern” flavor that the locations have. And an anomaly is also in the story: it is the unexpected snow that forces outlaws (or presumed such) to take refuge in the mountains of Utah and live hunted, in a time when bounty killers made a fortune with their bounties. Dead or alive; preferably dead (to quote Tessari). Easier to drag them before the law, easy to store under the snow during the ruthless harvest. The refugees hire a gunman, Silence, whose aim seems infallible and who has a passion for shooting thumbs, preventing anyone from shooting. Taciturn, dressed in a woman's fur coat, all in black but with the gentle and sad face of Jean Louis Trintignant, Silence is a champion for these desperate ones. Silence’s nemesis is Tigrero (Klaus Kinski, magnificent): mellifluous voice, gentle manners, preacher's hat, he is a fierce and bloodthirsty predator but acts within the law. The third man is a sheriff (Frank Wolff) with peasant manners but courageous, blunt face of honesty.
During a manhunt, Tigrero takes with him the wife of a bandit, a black woman (Vonetta Mc Gee), different among the different and lures to her husband, who is slaughtered by the bounty hunter. The widow swears vengeance and retrieves Tigrero to commission the settling of accounts. I’ll stop here, because it really is a film full of tragic surprises; this work is one of the most beloved westerns in the world, leading many to say that Corbucci was the best director of the genre in Italy, even better than Leone.
Sure, it is less conciliatory, and this film is proof of that; the harshness of the landscape (the exteriors were shot in Cortina d'Ampezzo but are believable) is the soul of the harshness of the story’s events. The intrinsic violence in the American world releases surreptitious and terminal, blessed by the law and thus legitimate. The defeated stand no chance.
The idea of this film comes from Marcello Mastroianni, who was initially supposed to play Silence (another candidate was Franco Nero, however, engaged on another set); the choice of Trintignant proves perfect as he embodies a fragile hero with a terrible secret in his past.
The relationship that will develop between Silence and the widow Pauline (desired by the town’s boss, the usurer Pollicut, played by Luigi Pistilli) is more like shipwreck survivors than lovers. Everything is dark, uncertain. The end is always a step away from their lives. These motifs will not benefit at the box office: the film will not have great success and the director will start to produce comedy westerns, always produced and realized with great care and sense of spectacle. "The Mercenary", "The Specialists", and the more famous "Compañeros" will be proverbial films ("Specialists" aside, curious for the presence of an effective Johnny Halliday but weaker) and will entertain the crowded theaters of the good old days.
"The Great Silence" is praised year after year to the point of being considered Corbucci’s masterpiece; although slightly overrated, it is a unique film in its genre, and its bitterness is deep and rare in an "entertainment" film. Worth it all the initial scene; accompanied by the poignant theme by Ennio Morricone (one of his most beautiful themes), Silence trudges through the thick blanket of snow and the mesh of the fir trees; having emerged from the almost impassable tangle, immersed in the whiteness and with no landscape other than snow, snow, snow, and more snow, he falls off his horse. The spirit of the film is happily encapsulated in this melancholic prologue.
A film like no other.
Loading comments slowly
