The Great Silence

For all I know he is the devil.

The Great Silence is directed by Sergio Corbucci and Corbucci co- writes the screenplay with Mario Amendola, Bruno Corbucci and Vittoriano Petrilli. It stars Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski, Frank Wolff, Luigi Pistilli, Vonetta McGee and Mario Brega. Music is by Ennio Morricone and cinematography by Silvano Ippoliti.

Snowhill, Utah - Winter at the turn of the century, and the local villagers have succumbed to thievery purely to survive. But with that comes bounties on their heads, which brings into the area the bounty hunters who are a law unto themselves. Enter the mute gunfighter known as Silence, who has a deep rooted hatred of bounty hunters...

Something of a cult classic and massively popul...

Killers in the snow of the (Italian) Old West

In 1898, a mute gunfighter called Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant) comes to a snowy town in northern Utah where ruthless bounty hunters clash with fugitives in the hills. He accepts a job from a widow (Vonetta McGee) to take out Loco (Klaus Kinski), the man who slew her husband.

Directed & co-written by Sergio Corbucci, The Great Silence (1968) ranks with the better Spaghetti Westerns due to several highlights: The awesome snowy setting, a moving score by Ennio Morricone, the silent protagonist, the uniquely beautiful Vonetta McGee (a rare black woman in a prominent role in an old Western), the dastardly villain played by Kinski and the shocking climax. It influenced future Western...

Set against a really effective wintry, hostile, background this tells the story of revenge - and that's always best served cold! A woman "Pauline" (Vonetta McGee) and her family are the victims of unscrupulous bandits. Bent of avenging their heinous behaviour, she hires an equally ruthless and deadly enforcer of her own (Jean-Louis Trintignant) to even the score. This anonymous, mute, gunman is very adept at settling scores, and as the bodies gradually pile up, it looks like a confrontation with the bounty hunter/killer "Tigrero" (Klaus Kinski) cannot be long for the waiting. This is a film that you need to watch with a blanket. The freezing scenarios are used superbly to create a sense of isolation, desperation and the frequent presence of...