The western, by definition, is dust. It is the sun baking your brain in the desert of Monument Valley. Sergio Corbucci takes this geographical and moral convention and turns it upside down, immersing it in snow. Il Grande Silenzio is not a western in the classic sense; it is an anti-western, a funeral elegy set in a white hell. The snow (the Dolomites pretending to be Utah) is not a picturesque backdrop; it is the moral protagonist of the film. It is a blanket that does not purify, but suffocates. It suffocates sound (the silence of the title), suffocates hope, suffocates morality. It is 1968, the year of failed revolutions and the repression of the Prague Spring, and Corbucci, already a master of “mud” and cynicism in Django, surpasses himself here. He moves from mud to frost and signs the definitive death warrant of the genre, a work of nihilism so pure that it makes Leone's films seem like optimistic comedies.

The protagonist of the western is, by definition, the one who speaks with his gun, but whose word (his “name”) carries weight. Corbucci presents us with a hero who is the very absence of the word: Silenzio (an alien, hieratic Jean-Louis Trintignant). His throat was cut as a child, a trauma that defines and motivates him. His silence is not the stoic choice of Leone's Man with No Name; it is a physical mutilation that reflects the moral mutilation of the world he inhabits. It is the central metaphor of the film: in this universe, justice is mute, incapable of articulating a discourse. Silenzio does not speak, he acts. And he acts with a Mauser C96, a semi-automatic pistol (technically anachronistic for the time, but visually perfect, a “nerdy” fetish of Corbucci's), a “modern” weapon against primitive brutality. He is not a defender of justice in the abstract; he is a professional avenger. He is paid to kill, but his code leads him to defend the “outcasts”—the poor, the Mormons, the marginalized forced into banditry by hunger—whom the “law” has made legal prey for bounty hunters.

The Italian Western redefined the concept of the “villain,” but Klaus Kinski in this film is on a higher level of perversion. His Tigrero (or Loco, depending on the dubbing) is pure evil, but he is not chaotic evil. He is a legalistic evil. He is a bounty hunter who kills only when it is “legal” (i.e., when his targets are defenseless and there is a bounty). Kinski, with his icy eyes that seem to be the only living thing in the landscape, does not act: he embodies the perversion of the law. He is a sadist who enjoys his work, but only because the system allows him to. Tigrero is a capitalist of death. But he is only the instrument. The real architect of evil is Pollicut (Luigi Pistilli), the banker, the “respectable” man in a suit and tie. He is the one who uses the law as a weapon, who pushes the poor into illegality (forcing them to steal to survive and thus accumulating bounties on their heads) in order to legally take possession of their property. Corbucci creates a terrifying alliance: predatory capitalism (Pollicut) and legalized violence (Tigrero). It is a ruthless critique of a system where property is worth more than human life.

The film does not stop at economic criticism. It is deeply political in its pessimism. In this world, the law (the “civil” law of the North) is represented by Sheriff Burnett (Frank Wolff), an honest but completely inept man. He is a bureaucrat who believes in rules and amnesty in a world that has already devoured every rule. His demise (treacherously murdered by Tigrero) is proof of the impotence of “justice” in the face of organized violence. And then there is Pauline (Vonetta McGee), the widow who hires Silence to avenge her husband. Her presence is revolutionary. Not only is she the driving force behind the action, but she is a black female protagonist in a genre dominated by white men. Her relationship (including physical) with Silenzio is an act of radical defiance of the racial conventions of 1968. She is the only bearer of hope in the film, the only one who still believes in the future. And this, in Corbucci's universe, is her cardinal sin, her death sentence.

Ennio Morricone's soundtrack is complicit in this murder of the myth. Forget the triumphant trumpets and coyote howls of the Dollar Trilogy. The Morricone of The Great Silence is a funeral composer. The score is a lament, an anticipated requiem. The main theme, led by a mournful guitar and subdued strings, does not celebrate the hero; it mourns his loneliness and heralds his defeat. It is music that offers no hope, but forces introspection. Morricone uses silence—the true silence of snow muffling sounds—as his main instrument, and his notes are only the necessary counterpoint to emphasize the emptiness. Enzo Barboni's cinematography (who, ironically, would become the director of the parody They Call Me Trinity) captures a cold, almost clinical light, and Morricone's music is the scalpel that cuts into this frozen surface.

And then, the ending. If Il Grande Silenzio were an American film, Silenzio, though wounded (perhaps in the hands, like Django), would have found an ingenious way to win. But Corbucci is a European nihilist. The ending of this film is one of the purest acts of cinematic terrorism in history. There is no catharsis. There is no justice. Tigrero, the villain, is methodical. He mutilates Silence by shooting his thumbs (his “voice,” his skill) and then executes him. He kills Pauline. He kills all the hostages Silence was trying to protect. And as he rides away with Pollicut's money, laughing, the camera pans up to a total massacre. The final caption, informing us that the “law” of 1899 would later make bounty killing illegal, is no consolation. It is a mockery. It is Corbucci's middle finger telling us: justice always comes too late, and it comes only for the history books, not for the victims. It is the perfect conclusion for 1968: idealism (Pauline, Silenzio) is massacred by power (Tigrero, Pollicut). There is no hope. There is only silence.