Original subtitles

it has been set by many film historians

that no other genre encapsulate the

zeitgeist of any given decade more than

the western genre that once removed

quality allows an artist opens sambong's

to say some pretty dark things about

modern society without seeming too

on-the-nose or preachy nowhere in

history is is more evident than in the

1960s the Vietnam War Che Guevara

the peak of the hippie movement it was a

volatile and heavily politicized time to

say the least

sure they were wonderful films in the

present that represented this as well

such as Easy Rider if you are looking

for a film that represented the time

period more than any other you find it

in quite an odd place the spaghetti

western movement out of Italy but really

I suppose it's not that out at all

sometimes you need an outsider's

perspective on something remove all of

the noise and get a full view of it in

Technicolor the spaghetti western

movement began in the 1960s and Italy

American made westerns at this time will

fail it this is not only because of the

revolutionary time period but also

because many of them were becoming

boring and formulaic for example the

once superstar John Wayne was becoming

old and jaded the Italians much like the

illustrious wu-tang clan thirty years

later took their influence from the

existing Eastern cinema at the time most

notably Akira Kurosawa all gift of

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it three coffins ready

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they turned the West on its head they

made it more violent more brutal more

amoral than ever before the Western

antihero was born but most importantly

these films were more political than

ever before they ask deep questions

about society with the ability to hide

these difficult topics under a layer of

parable like storytelling they were able

to tackle them more lightly without ever

seeming too preachy or over-the-top the

most common example of this is where

they would use the mexican-american and

civil war to both be used to make

commentary on the brutality in

senselessness of the Vietnam but there

are countless examples of topics tackled

from the censuses of racism to the a

morality of capitalism as a whole at the

start

some critics wrote these films off as

Italians ripping off American cinema

this however couldn't be further from

the truth

the Italians seem to put more effort

into realism that American Studios had

in a very long time it is often claimed

that the three best directors of this

movement are all named Sergio Sergio

Leone Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Salima

Sergio Leone has often claimed as the

reigning king of all the Sergio's whilst

the other tool written off as

quote-unquote the other Sergio's in fact

when Burt Reynolds was asked in talk

show about being the lead in Sergio

Corbucci Navajo Joe we often recycled

the same story the punchline being that

he got the wrong Sergio

however Fame director and film critic

Alex Cox believes it's Burt Reynolds

greatest film and I personally couldn't

agree more

in fact in retrospect perhaps he was

just a little jealous he didn't Bluff

like Clint Eastwood did under Leone's

work Sergio Corbucci is one of the

greatest filmmakers of all time and

whilst being considered in second place

as Sergio Leone is definitely no insult

it's truly an unfair statement to put on

for Butchie who was a master of his own

it's influence on modern cinema is

astounding it can most recently be seen

in the works of Quentin Tarantino

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her Butchie might be the darkest and

most brutal director of all time he made

Weston's feel like punk rock he was a

radical leftist and he had no problem

showing the world how brutal human

beings can get he was heavily political

many characters that might be considered

heroes among his contemporaries such as

bounty killers for example were shown as

the brutal thugs that they were really

were in Capote's work nowhere is this

more on display than his widely praised

and most controversial film the great

silence

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film considered so nihilistic by the

studio owner times arrow at sunny that

it was barred from American release for

fifty years and its first official of

the United States screening occurred in

late 2018 Darrel felt the film was pure

nihilism he was run of course the film

is dripping in subversive political

commentary released in 1968 at the peak

of the counterculture and in reaction to

the assassination of civil rights

activist Malcolm X one of Sergio's

biggest heroes this film is not only a

subversion and critique of the classic

Western trope of a lone gunman cleaning

up the town but a brutal critique of

modern-day capitalism the primary

antagonist of both bounty hunters the

leader of the gang played by the

renowned actor Klaus Kinski in his most

reserved performance of his career as

the chilling prefecture Slocum who kills

his victims and then pauses the Tala

demon is legible a true capitalist

entrepreneur he is of course best

friends with the bank owner in the

movies town snowy hill who allegorically

speaking represents the corporate

capitalistic greed of the real world

there's also a new town sheriff

and he's a complete [ __ ] warm in

legit tries to punch loco through the

jail cell bars and [ __ ] up his hand in

most westerns he'd be pure comic relief

for his idiocy and he is hilarious

however he is gunned down by loco and

really he represents the inefficiency of

our real world authority figures early

in the film loco kills a bounty a young

black as he rides away and even chortles

to himself at the idea of a black corpse

being worth as much as a white bounty

that fits what times we live in no

blacks worth as much as it what did we

the wife of the black man decides to

hire someone to kill Loco into silence

the film's hero silence shares

superficial characteristics with other

heroes organic westerns

for example he is dressed in cool ass

black clothes he can shoot faster than

any other gunman and most importantly he

is son

I also long friend I hope you'll be a

little bit more Duquette it next time

much like Clint Eastwood Leone's film

but he's not the quote-on-quote strong

silent but the science is in fact unmute

as a result of his throat being

lacerated as a child he actually doesn't

speak a single word throughout the

entire film

this is brutally dark when he attempts

to scream in horrific pain near the end

of the film but nothing comes out

silence has a reputation here's the

fastest shooter in all of the West and

for the right price you can hire him to

kill anyone that you would like me to of

course the most ironic part about all

this is the price that he charges for

this job is the same amount of money

that Loco charges for each of its bounty

one thousand dollars

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the ending of this film is one of the

most controversial profound film endings

of all time in fact while I was

researching for this video myself I

found countless research papers

analyzing the ending of the film so I'm

going to spoil the ending so if you

haven't seen the movie please code watch

it okay so at the end of the film low

twos gang brutally attack silence in the

platform and science is left on the

brink of death Loco then rounds up all

of the defenses and starving illegal

immigrants and places them inside the

saloon and he says that he will

personally execute every single one of

them if silence does not show up there

by now of course silence being the

quote-unquote hero shows up to fight it

out and then

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he has brutally [ __ ] slaughtered and

quickly as well and that was bad enough

already

but because he attempted to draw his gun

first

technically loco didn't even break the

law when he killed him and then cherry

on top local in his gang [ __ ] kill

all of the helpless immigrants anyway

and that is the end of the movie yep to

the end of the goddamn movie see I

wasn't joking around when I said this

film was done only is it duck butt

Sergio Corbucci and his contemporaries I

just spent the last decade of their

careers trading these mythic like

seemingly bulletproof Western heroes he

played off this expectation of the

spaghetti western genre to make a state

in the great silence on the surface it

could easily be argued that this film is

about how corporate power and

capitalistic ideologies always win and

no one can ever really fight back and

that silence perhaps represents the

real-life assassinations that inspired

the film and this is all very true

there's more to this ending than that

truth be told silence he's portrayed as

the classic Western hero a Clint

Eastwood type but this is a hero through

a surface mirror

silence is in fact a horrible man he

claims to live by a code for example he

only ever shoots in self-defense but

this really is only to stay within the

law he eggs people to draw their guns

first and when they do not only will he

kill them he will often leave his

victims with permanent disfigurements

and disabilities it's clear that he gets

just as much pleasure as loco does from

maiming his victims in fact you could

even argue that loco is perhaps a better

man because he knows who he is and he

never clings to some false notion of

moral superiority above all else this

film is a commentary about how living

via code

does not automatically absolve a person

their brutal behavior so whilst this

film looks up to Kapoor cheese Marxist

heroes such as Che Guevara's but trying

to make a better world cappucci is not

going to absolve his heroes for all the

brutal acts of torture and terrible

things that they did in an attempt to

get their way what's up Jake pause so

I'm planning on using this channel to

not only upload more of these video

essays but also my own films and music

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