The Great Silence (1968)
'Spaghetti westerns' are a hit or miss with me. And that's because of the dubbing that's used. In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef all recorded their dialogue in English with only some of the secondary actors recording in Italian. But in The Great Silence the dialog is recorded in Italian, well I believe Klaus Kinski might have done broken Italian or German and was dubbed latter into Italian...I watched in Italian for a while with subs but Klaus Kinski sounded funny and the idea of a western movie set in Utah with everyone speaking Italian seemed odd. So I ended up watching it in English dub, but that doesn't sound right either and made the actors seem less skilled than they actually were.
I did like the shooting locations, the snow covered mountains of Utah and the cinematography was great and different for a western. Loco (Klaus Kinski) was pretty darn intense! And the idea of the mute Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant) with his own honor code was a pretty good character too. Like in TGTBTU I didn't like the Italian style of ultra close ups of the actors faces, it's just odd looking to me.
The story of settlers being chased out and killed by the rich land baron is often used, but it's a good story plot so it works here, and much better than it did in The Salvation. The opening scene requires some suspension of disbelief. Silence is riding in an open field of snow and a group of men are hiding behind bushes with rifles, laying in ambush. Silence would've been killed right then and there if this was real. It was hard to believe he had time to open up his gun box/holster thing and pull out his pistol and shoot all of the armed men who had rifles and had been aiming at him. But Silence is so good that he can shoot all the men before they can even graze him. I bet he could've shot all of those armed men after drinking five whiskeys too
I did like the shooting locations, the snow covered mountains of Utah and the cinematography was great and different for a western. Loco (Klaus Kinski) was pretty darn intense! And the idea of the mute Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant) with his own honor code was a pretty good character too. Like in TGTBTU I didn't like the Italian style of ultra close ups of the actors faces, it's just odd looking to me.
The story of settlers being chased out and killed by the rich land baron is often used, but it's a good story plot so it works here, and much better than it did in The Salvation. The opening scene requires some suspension of disbelief. Silence is riding in an open field of snow and a group of men are hiding behind bushes with rifles, laying in ambush. Silence would've been killed right then and there if this was real. It was hard to believe he had time to open up his gun box/holster thing and pull out his pistol and shoot all of the armed men who had rifles and had been aiming at him. But Silence is so good that he can shoot all the men before they can even graze him. I bet he could've shot all of those armed men after drinking five whiskeys too
Last edited by Citizen Rules; 01-10-20 at 07:44 PM.