The Great Silence (1968)

THE GREAT SILENCE  (1968)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Sergio Corbucci
    Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski, Frank Wolff,
    Vonetta McGee, Luigi Pastilli, Mario Brega
Most spaghetti westerns don't look like this: all cold and snowbound, with characters wrapped head to foot in long fur coats. The story takes place in the winter in Utah, which looks a lot different from the usual spaghetti West. (It was shot in the Dolomite Alps.) There's a mysterious stranger who never speaks and has a peculiar habit of shooting the thumbs off people he really doesn't like. He's played by French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant, who's not the first name that comes to mind when your thinking of a spaghetti western. Then there's a bounty hunter who's paid to bring his suspects in dead or alive, so he brings them in dead because it's easier. He's played by Klaus Kinski, who looks like he has a screw loose somewhere, and apparently did. There's a ragged gang of bandits living up in the mountains, and a sheriff who's as talkative as the stranger is silent, and a town whose only inhabitants appear to be whores and more bounty hunters, plus one corrupt public official who acts as the community's banker, mayor and judge. Most of these people will catch a bullet eventually, but not necessarily the people you think. Tarantino must've watched this a few times while he was dreaming up "The Hateful Eight". The ending's subversive, even by spaghetti western standards. See for yourself.