Snow Set Movie 1: The Great Silence (1968)


It’s time to kick off the Snow Set Movie Marathon.  Each movie in the series has snow or ice as a major factor in their plot or setting.  I’m in for a lot of white this month with both that and Christmas shows and movies going on.  The first movie I watched involved a blizzard in Utah in the late 19th century.

The Great Silence is about a battle between two bounty hunters, a sheriff, some townspeople, and some hungry outsiders.  It stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Klaus Kinski among others.  It’s a spaghetti western that takes place in Utah during the great blizzard of 1899.  There’s not much more that I want to reveal about the movie to you because that would take away from the movie itself.

I’m not much of a western guy myself.  At least, I never thought I was until the past few years when I discovered that I actually like quite a good number of them.  I think it was because my father always watched Bonanza, the television show, or a certain few John Wayne movies.  And Quigley Down Under.  It wasn’t a wide range, so I probably just wouldn’t like any of those due to forced childhood oversaturation.  However, nowadays I can find a western that I thoroughly enjoy and The Great Silence was one of them.

I’d say the only problem with this is the same problem that comes with any of the spaghetti western films.  The dubbing is hilariously bad.  I’m not sure if spaghetti westerns ever had subtitles.  I don’t think they would because everyone was speaking their own language, I think.  They spoke whatever they were comfortable speaking, and were dubbed over later on.  Dubbing always bugs me, but once I got past that, I was right into this film.

There is a tension that builds throughout the film that I haven’t actually felt in a while.  The tension was masterful.  The way it built throughout the movie and the eventual payoff led to a film ending that was tough.  You don’t see movies built this way often.  When you find one, and it’s masterfully crafted in the way that The Great Silence is crafted, you should celebrate that.

The Great Silence was a great way to bring myself into a marathon full of films that take place in the snow.  It showed me a genre that typically would never involve snow of this amount.  The movie was a very enjoyable watch that left me thinking for quite a lot of time.  If you don’t know about this movie but it sounds like something you would be interested in seeing, check it out.  I would say it’s worth the watch.

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