I thought that I had reached the zenith of the 'spaghetti Western' genre with the Sergio Leone Dollars Trilogy and Once Upon A Time In The West. However with this Western I was alerted to the brilliance of another great director called Sergio, Sergio Corbucci.
I have seen another Corbucci film, Django from 1966 a few years ago. You could call this film the Western in the snow. It certainly was the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino with his The Hateful Eight film.
The film is about a man with no voice, never mind no name! No seriously the lead (Jean-Louis Trintignant) had his vocal chords forcibly removed in childhood in a attack on his parents by bounty hunters. It is this memory that drives Silence to have a dislike of Bounty hunter/killers and their methods. This film has plenty of them epitomized by Klaus Kinski as Bounty Hunter Loco.
The film has an excellent music score by the legendary Ennio Morricone. The score matches up to any of his other work.
The ending of a Western, or any film for that matter usually sees good prevail and justice being made etc...not here. The hero, Silence is gunned down along with several mountain farmer outlaws as Loco escapes with his life.
The ending proved so controversial when the film was made in the late 1960s that it never got a widespread release in territories like the U.S. and U.K. despite the film being purchased by studio Twentieth Century Fox. I would go as far as to rate this the greatest western film I have seen, which is a lot!
I have seen another Corbucci film, Django from 1966 a few years ago. You could call this film the Western in the snow. It certainly was the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino with his The Hateful Eight film.
The film is about a man with no voice, never mind no name! No seriously the lead (Jean-Louis Trintignant) had his vocal chords forcibly removed in childhood in a attack on his parents by bounty hunters. It is this memory that drives Silence to have a dislike of Bounty hunter/killers and their methods. This film has plenty of them epitomized by Klaus Kinski as Bounty Hunter Loco.
The film has an excellent music score by the legendary Ennio Morricone. The score matches up to any of his other work.
The ending of a Western, or any film for that matter usually sees good prevail and justice being made etc...not here. The hero, Silence is gunned down along with several mountain farmer outlaws as Loco escapes with his life.
The ending proved so controversial when the film was made in the late 1960s that it never got a widespread release in territories like the U.S. and U.K. despite the film being purchased by studio Twentieth Century Fox. I would go as far as to rate this the greatest western film I have seen, which is a lot!