Nothing works out the way these people, not to mention audiences who love classic Hollywood westerns, expect. Not even close.

The mood is sometimes jaunty, but "The Great Silence" is no joke, and the fatalism of its ending serves as an implicit critique of the sentimental optimism of many Hollywood westerns.

Corbucci constantly subverts the generic tropes that he dabbled with two years earlier in Django, that blood-soaked and oft-imitated riff on A Fistful of Dollars.

The Great Silence is, quite simply, one of the best Spaghetti Westerns ever made