The Great Silence can now be heard.

Alex Cox just directed me to this amazing YouTube video. Someone has found the audio for the "happy" alternate ending to The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio.)

Another kind person created subtitles. Just hit the small "cc" button and viola.

I love how Frank Wolff saves the day. He was such an underrated Spaghetti Western actor. He was an American actor who followed Eastwood and Van Cleef to Europe to make films. He had some success but the nightmare of depression caught up with him and he killed himself in 1971.

I don't know a lot about the French actor, Jean-Louis Trintignant, who played Silence. He is still alive today. The Great Silence was his only Spaghetti Western.

You know I'm a Klausophile and Klaus Kinski is at his smugtastic best in The Great Silence as Tigrero, the bounty killer.

Any Spaghetti Western fan worth his weight in bullets has The Great Silence in their Top 10 list. It's a classic of the genre and while this ending is just horrible for the story, finding the audio is pretty exciting for us SW dorks.

Now if we can just find copies of VAMOS A MATAR SARTANA (incredibly rare, but rumors persist that there are copies out there), CHRYSTANTHEMUMS FOR A BUNCH OF SWINE (not even a hint of a copy still existing,) and A GUNMAN CALLED DAKOTA (supposedly there are film reels but no VHS or DVD releases.)