High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio, 1968), or The Big Silence, is an Italian spaghetti western. It is widely considered by critics as the masterpiece of director Sergio Corbucci and is one of his better known movies, along with Django (1966). Unlike most conventional and spaghetti westerns, The Great Silence takes place in the snow-filled landscapes of Utah during the Great Blizzard of 1899.