This 1960s Spaghetti Western subverted every genre trope,
and U.S. distributors were not happy.
COLLIDER
By Aled Owen
March 14, 2024
While Sergio Leone's "Man With No Name" trilogy
climaxed in the mid-1960s with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, another
Spaghetti Western director was experiencing his own international success
story. 1966's Django made such a huge splash for director Sergio Corbucci that
nearly 40 other Spaghetti Westerns set to release in the following years were
renamed to include the name "Django" and ride on the coattails of
Corbucci's success. Of course, it also went on to inspire 2012's Django Unchained
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and the 2023 series from Sky/Canal+.
In 1987, Corbucci would eventually direct the only official sequel, Django
Strikes Again [actually it was directed by NELLO ROSATTI], but his true follow-up came only two years after Django when he
made Il Grande Silenzio — also known as The Great Silence.
The '60s were a time of great change worldwide, both
culturally and politically. As such, Hollywood's long line of conservative
Westerns (a la John Ford and John Wayne) were opposed by the gritty reality of
"mud and blood," as Corbucci himself put it. Shot largely in Italy,
the Spaghetti Western's disassociation with the real American West setting gave
it the perspective to tell its stories in an unadulterated warts-and-all
manner. Although Corbucci expressed disdain for the hippie culture of the '60s,
he was an undeniable leftist and anti-authoritarian. His films explored his
politics but were largely consumed by conservatives, making for the perfect
Trojan Horse for his ideas. However, with The Great Silence, its pessimistic
ending was too much, and the film was not released in the United States until
the new millennium.
How 'The Great Silence' Flips the Script on Westerns
From the very opening of The Great Silence, Sergio
Corbucci flips the script. In an era when bounty killers became the only
conceivable way of policing the great frontiers, groups of innocent
"outlaws" hid in the wild, weathering the elements in the hopes of
evading the bloodthirsty, money-hungry men paid to kill them for profit (led by
Klaus Kinski's Loco). That's where our hero comes in, a mute known only as
Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant). As a killer of killers, Silence becomes a
symbol, striking fear into the hearts of those who make money from senselessly
killing men and women without a trial. From the very start, the film swaps the
traditional archetypes, showing us a world much grayer than the black-and-white
world of '50s Westerns, and the poignancy of this idea continues to this day.
According to Repo Man director and Corbucci historian
Alex Cox, "Corbucci apparently was moved, not by the more celebrated
murders of Robert Kennedy or Dr. Martin Luther King, but by the deaths of Che
Guevara and Malcolm X. He was something of a leftist, and he apparently made
Grande Silenzio as a tribute to those two revolutionary fighters." Shot in
the Italian Alps (doubling for 1899 Utah), the story also sees Silence fall in
love with the widow of one of Loco's victims, a strong-willed African-American
woman named Pauline (Vonetta McGee). Their interracial romance alluded to the
ongoing Civil Rights movement in the United States, but that wasn't what made
20th Century Fox refuse to release The Great Silence in the States.
Why 'The Great Silence' Wasn't Released in the United
States
The U.S. distribution rights were bought by 20th Century
Fox as a gift for actor Clint Eastwood, whose success in Sergio Leone's
Spaghetti Westerns made him Hollywood's go-to gunslinger and a successor to the
aging John Wayne. The idea was for Eastwood to star in an English-language
remake of Il Grande Silenzio in the role of the mute gunfighter. 20th Century
Fox's Darryl Francis Zanuck was shown a screening of the Italian original and
was offended by its cynical ending in which the wounded Silence tries and fails
to save the innocent outlaws and is killed alongside his lover at the hand of
the brutal and unstoppable bounty killers.
"He swallowed his cigar and said, '20th Century Fox
would never release this picture!'" stated Cox, who went on to reveal that
Corbucci had expected this and shot two alternate endings for the film, as seen
in the Blu-ray release. One sees the hero effortlessly kill all his enemies and
liberate the bounties, making for an unearned happy ending "of such
cynical and bizarre proportions that it's unbelievable." The second
alternate ending feels somewhere in-between, with Silence being shot and one of
Loco's men leaving the building calmly. This bittersweet ending is vague and
bizarre. As a result, Fox released the film in foreign territories but not in
the States. As for Eastwood, the project was developed into a completely
unrelated movie called, Joe Kidd.
When Was 'The Great Silence' Released in the United
States?
For decades, the film endured, being passed around during
its second life on home video, and even garnered a cult following. It became a
legendary film, sought out by cinephiles and collectors until 2012, the year of
Tarantino's Spaghetti Western part revival, part homage Django Unchained. With
Spaghetti Westerns back in the zeitgeist and audiences hungry for the original
movies that inspired the new Tarantino film, the demand for The Great Silence
was prevalent. Under license from Beta Film, the film experienced its first
U.S. theatrical release, when an English-dubbed 35mm print was toured around the
country. Tarantino's follow-up The Hateful Eight would take lots of direct
inspiration from The Great Silence specifically, with Little White Lies
reporting, "With its snowed-in setting, homicidal bounty hunters and
original Ennio Morricone score, [it] bears a striking resemblance to Italian
director Sergio Corbucci’s blood-soaked Spaghetti Western from 1968."
The Great Silence subverted every trope established by
the genre before it, stripping it down to reveal what truly matters in the
genre. It exchanges the great Western desert plains for the snowy wasteland of
the 1899 blizzard. It swaps the roles of the traditional law enforcers and the
man in black. It gave its female heroine a three-dimensional character. And of
course, most shockingly, it subverts expectations by having the villains win
and the hero lose. How then can this possibly be part of the Western genre if
it breaks almost all its rules? Because, in short, it's only by deconstructing
the genre that we are able to truly define it, and in the case of The Great
Silence, Corbucci makes it clear that all a Western needs is a character with a
moral view of right and wrong who lives and dies by that code... even if it's
not to 20th Century Fox's liking!