It could claim to be the most subversive denouement in the
history of narrative cinema. The ending of Sergio Corbucci’s Italian
Western The Great Silence (1968) sees not only the film’s hero gunned
down, having failed to save the day, but also features the massacre of every
other sympathetic or victimised character in the film. Upon deeper examination
there are several factors that contribute to its subversive stance. Corbucci
was a director of several Spaghetti Westerns containing left wing and radical
politics as either the subject or subtext. The Italian Western itself was seen
as a subversion of a unique American art form. This was mainly down to what Frayling
(2006) calls the ‘Cultural Roots’ controversy, the initial criticism faced by
Westerns of Italian origin that they ‘had no ‘cultural roots’ in American
history or folklore, they were likely to be cheap, opportunistic imitations’
(Frayling, 2006 p,121). Another significant factor that may explain the film’s
subversive tone was its timing. The film was released in 1968, and contains an
explicit, though not terribly in depth, criticism of capitalism, an interracial
sex scene, and has a downbeat, pessimistic ending, all of which are in keeping
with the counter cultural zeitgeist of the late 1960’s. While each of these
factors contributes, it is the ending that marks the film as a truly subversive
work of cinema.
James Newton
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