Product Description

On an unforgiving, snow swept frontier, a group of bloodthirsty bounty hunters, led by the vicious Loco (Klaus Kinski, Nosferatu, For a Few Dollars More) prey on a band of persecuted outlaws who have taken to the hills. As the price on each head is collected one-by-one, only a mute gunslinger named Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant, The Conformist) stands between the innocent refuges and the greed and corruption that the bounty hunters represent. But, in this harsh, brutal world, the lines between right and wrong aren't always clear and good doesn't always triumph. Featuring superb photography and a haunting score from maestro Ennio Morricone, director Sergio Corbucci's bleak, brilliant and violent vision of an immoral, honorless west is widely considered to be among the very best and most influential Euro-Westerns ever made.

Review

I'm not generally one for nostalgia, but I do regret the loss of a certain kind of craziness that used to flourish in movies the kind that is on rich and ripe display in The Great Silence, a 1968 Italian western by Sergio Corbucci that is only now receiving a proper theatrical release in this country. There is something about the film's brazen mixing of incompatible elements that defies categorization, imitation or even sober critical assessment. It's anarchic and rigorous, sophisticated and goofy, heartfelt and cynical. The score, by Ennio Morricone, is as mellow as wine. The action is raw, nasty and blood-soaked. The story is preposterous, the politics sincere... The mood is sometimes jaunty, but The Great Silence is no joke, and the fatalism of its ending serves as an implicit critique of the sentimental optimism of many Hollywood westerns. Power speaks louder than silence. --A.O. Scott, The New York Times

Packs a bleak, bloody punch...[and] goes out with a devastating bang. - Simon Abrams, The Village Voice

Brutal, bleakly beautiful spaghetti Western filmed on stark locations in the Dolomites, with one of the most uncompromising and unforgettable finales ever filmed. --Leonard Maltin

Sensationally grim...be prepared for a holy bludgeoning. - David Edelstein, New York Magazine

The greatest spaghetti Western ever made. --Alex Cox, director of Sid & Nancy and Repo Man