One of the best genre films of 1968 was among the very best commercial releases of 2018. Sergio Corbucci’s “The Great Silence” escaped the vault and is available for streaming from Amazon Prime and Vudu. Corbucci (1927-90) may be Sergio Leone’s only rival as the maestro of Italian westerns, and “The Great Silence,” which had its belated theatrical opening last spring, is arguably his masterpiece — stylized, subversive and superbly perverse, not least in its casting, mise-en-scène and Ennio Morricone’s typically eccentric score.

Morricone’s occasional passages of raga rock notwithstanding, the world of “The Great Silence” is alpine. The frozen landscape not only recalls 1950s Hollywood “northwesterns” like “The Far Country” but the German “mountain films” of the 1920s and ’30s. Everything is blanketed with a deep snow that, among other things, highlights the frequently spilled, bright-red blood.