Il Grande Silenzio (The Great Silence) (1968)
Director: Sergio Corbucci
Principle actors: Klaus Kinski, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Frank Wolff, Vonetta McGee
Il Grande Silenzio, or The Great Silence, is perhaps the bleakest and grittiest spaghetti Western I have ever seen. This is not achieved through landscape and surroundings; the Sergio Leone Westerns and others I’ve seen take place in areas more desolate than those depicted in this film. The Great Silence is so bleak and dark because its characters are so well-defined. The villains are cruel and heartless. The hero is vengeful but stoic. This character definition jolts us during the film’s final scenes, perhaps the most unhappy in Western history.
The film is set in Snowhill, Utah, a lawless area patrolled by bounty hunters, who murder “outlaws” indiscriminately and are handsomely rewarded for their crimes. The outlaws they hunt down and kill are locals who made the trespass of stealing a loaf of bread to feed their families, or who decided not to join up with the murderous gang. That is to say, the outlaws really aren’t outlaws at all.
The bounty killers are led by Loco, played by Klaus Kinski. He’s a smooth talker with a ruggedly handsome face, but this demeanor masks an evil scoundrel. We’re introduced to him as he ropes a victim by the neck and drags him along with his horse. Loco is trying to get the man to give up the other outlaws. When the man finally relents, Loco thanks him for the information and shoots him through the chest.
Kinski has played a megalomaniacal madman in several films, notably in his collaborations with famed German director Werner Herzog. Though it might seem like this material would call for a similar performance, Kinski plays it relatively straight here. He’s a cool and collected murderer; a nice antithesis to the hero. The film benefits because of this.
And what would a spaghetti Western be without a strong hero? The Great Silence has one of the best. The hero’s name is Silence, because, well, he’s a mute. We get a flashback of Silence as a young boy witnessing the bounty killers of the time killing his parents. One moves to kill the boy, but the ringleader intervenes. He has a nastier idea; cut his vocal chords out. The film thankfully spares us the details.
In researching the film for this review, I found that director Corbucci wanted to make a Western that took the conventions of the genre to the extreme and turn some of them on their heads. Since most Western heroes don’t talk much, why bother having this one talk at all? It’s amazing how well the film works despite what would seem like a tremendous handicap. Some of the burden is lifted by the sheriff of Snowhill, Frank Wolff, who provides the dialogue when a “good guy” needs a line.
Corbucci is known for his vast array of “spaghetti’s”, of which I’ve only seen a couple. Another, his Django (1966), is hailed as one of the finest and most grim spaghetti Westerns ever made. I didn’t see it that way. The action was hokey, the acting was poor, and, unbelievably, the hero actually wants to give up the life of a gunslinger to settle down with a dame! That’s not a Western!
Violence alone does not a good Western make. Although The Great Silence is indeed very violent, Django was much more graphic, and lo and behold, it wasn’t very good. The violence isn’t the show in The Great Silence. It works with the acting, strong archetypical characters, and the wonderfully simplistic storyline. These things are vital to a good Western, and The Great Silence has them all.
I started this review by talking about how bleak this film is. Indeed, the tone of the film is very dark and dreadful. Even in snow-covered landscapes, the film is dim, often shot by candlelight. The evil bounty hunters are dirty and grimy and kill at will. The score is not heroic and upbeat, but tense and sharp. Even the English dubbing of the actors is off-putting (though never distracting) and adds to the mood.
And finally, the ending. This is perhaps the most unhappy, downtrodden ending ever put to film. I give Corbucci a lot of credit for ending his film in the way he did, even though I instinctively resisted such an ending. It must be seen to be believed. The end of the film is just one reason why The Great Silence was able to carve a respectable niche out for itself amidst a sea of look-alikes.
B+
Lord of War (2005)
Director: Andrew Nichol
Principle actors: Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto, Bridget Moynahan, Ethan Hawke, Eamonn Walker
The writers and creators of Lord of War got greedy. They had on their hands a great film about gun running and its contribution to the creation of some of the shitholes we have in Asia and Africa, and perhaps even some of the situations we have in America. We have strong actors here (excluding black hole Bridget Moynahan) and an intrinsically interesting and relevant story. Unfortunately, the film tries to do way too much and overextends itself needlessly and recklessly. Lord of War gets bogged down in foolish sentimentalism and humanity in a film that doesn’t need those feelings. It shuns them in one scene, and then tries to reintroduce them in the next. The dichotomy fails.
I want to state that I like Nicolas Cage. He’s a solid actor, and it seems like none of the bombs he’s in (and there are plenty) end up sticking to him. He’s been great in some films (The Weather Man, Matchstick Men, Adaptation.) and in others he’s hilariously over the top (Con Air). He’s by far the best thing about Lord of War, and the film would be truly dreadful if it weren’t for his performance.
Cage plays a Ukrainian, Yuri Orlov, living in New York City with his parents and younger brother (Leto). Russian mafia violence occurs in his neighborhood on a daily basis, and one day he sees a couple of hit men get taken out by their presumed target in a local bar. It hits him like a ton of bricks; why don’t I get into that?
The film from that point is a whirlwind of gun smuggling, gun dealing, backroom handshakes, cocaine, and maniacal warlords. The film doesn’t waste a lot of time bringing Cage from a newbie in the gun world to its ultimate force, perhaps to its detriment.
The best scenes of the film are Cage (and sometimes Leto) narrowly avoiding being caught red handed smuggling their cache of weapons into different countries. Ethan Hawke plays an Interpol agent named Jack Valentine who is constantly hounding and following Cage. In one scene, Cage and Leto are on a freighter filled with guns. They receive a tip that Hawke is hot on their trail, so they paint a new name on the boat, fly a different flag over it, and radio a fake tip that the boat Interpol is looking for is 100 miles away. In another scene, Cage has a military helicopter modified so that it appears to be for humanitarian use, right before Valentine arrives to arrest him.
Lord of War also brings Cage into various African nations, and he becomes associates with the bloodthirsty warlord of Liberia, Andre Baptiste Sr. (a thinly-veiled reference to former Liberian warlord and ruler Charles Taylor). It is truly enjoyable and fascinating to watch the relationship between Cage and Baptiste (played by Eamonn Walker in a nice part). It’s simple; Cage provides guns and Baptiste loves to shoot them. It becomes much more complicated than that.
Like I mentioned, however, Lord of War tries to be two movies. We have the heartless and completely immoral Cage performing his services as a gun runner and looking indifferently towards the poor people who are being slaughtered with his merchandise. The other movie concerns Cage’s family (his wife, primarily) and tries to use his family as a mirror to reflect Cage’s descent into moral bankruptcy.
Cage’s wife, Bridget Moynahan, and their son serve only to show Cage’s rudeness and scumminess in the most on-the-nose ways possible. For instance, when his son is taking his first steps, Moynahan tells him frantically to watch. Cage is preoccupied with the news reports of the fall of the Soviet Union (meaning more business for him), and doesn’t turn to look. Later, he’s on the phone with her and hangs up without responding to “I love you”. It’s so easy that it’s embarrassing.
The movie wants to have its cake and eat it too. It shoehorns sentimentality and morality into Cage’s character where it simply doesn’t belong. He’s built up throughout the film as an embodiment of immorality. So when he cries at his brother’s death (sorry) or reacts negatively to his wife leaving him (again, sorry), we don’t care. He’s been so ruthless and so detached the entire film that we don’t believe he would care about these things.
When Lord of War is dealing with an acerbic Cage involved in international wheelings and dealings and corrupt heads of state, it works. When it delves into sentimentality, it fails miserably. We’ll call it…
C+
John Lacey
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