Jean-Louis
Trintignant had plenty of work in Italy (like The Conformist and Death Laid
an Egg), but they usually dubbed the iconic French actor. Not in this case.
The man Trintignant plays is not known as Silence (Silenzio) for no reason. His
vocal chords were sliced as child to prevent him from identifying his parents’
killers. He will have a chance for some payback in this snowy Spaghetti
Western, but justice is a just as frozen as the landscape in Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence (trailer here), which opens its long belated U.S. theatrical run this
Friday at Film Forum.
Silence deserves its
reputation as one of the darkest Spaghetti Westerns ever. Corbucci’s Django was not exactly Pollyannaish, but
the producers of Silence forced him
to film a cheerful and tidy alternate ending for the American market. As it
turned out, there was no American market, so it remained unused—and do not go
in expecting it now. Instead, there will be snow and death.
Utah,
1899. The state is about to be buried under the great blizzard and they are
already plagued by rogue bounty hunters. The new governor has pledged to pardon
the outlaws forced into the hills by the usurious banker and justice of the
peace Henry Pollicut, but until the legalities are formalized, the swarms of
bounty hunters will continue to shoot first and drop off the body for payment
later.
Loco
is the worst of the worst. His latest victim was African American outlaw James
Middleton, whose wife Pauline is of particular interest to Pollicut. Instead of
submitting, she recruits the wandering gunman known as Silence to avenge her
husband. Silence has a knack for goading his prey into drawing first, allowing
the shootist to blast them to their eternal judgement with no fear of prosecution.
However, Loco understands his M.O.—and will seek to exploit it.
Supposedly,
Silence is set in Utah (filmed in the
Dolomites), but it has a decidedly Euro vibe. Partly it is due to Ennio Morricone’s
soaring score, which sounds closer to Michel Legrand than his iconic Dollars trilogy themes. The pessimism
and fatalism are also very European (seriously, how hard can it be to solve the
bounty killer problem—just stop paying bounties).
Regardless,
Trintignant is surprisingly hardnosed and badassed as Silence. Vonetta McGee
(best known for blaxploitation classics like Melinda, Hammer, and Blacula)
is terrifically fierce as the widow Middleton, while Klaus Kinski is supernaturally
slimy as Loco. However, the late Frank Wolff is the unexpected X-factor, portraying
Sheriff Gideon Burnett as a reluctantly righteous, decidedly un-shticky
secondary hero figure.
Weird
crippling and hobbling themes run throughout both Great Silence and Django.
Antagonists are not merely beaten or killed. They are emasculated and broken.
That makes both films grist for Freudian analysis, but Silence is also a feast for the eyes, thanks to Silvano Ippoliti’s
dramatically stark widescreen cinematography. The result is a Spaghetti Western
that is both a compelling morality play and an idiosyncratic oddity. Highly recommended
for western fans in the mood for something darker and different, The Great Silence opens this Friday
(3/30) in New York, at Film Forum.
