The Big Gundown (1966)

 

American Communist Dalton Trumbo wrote a "psychological western" while Italian Communists made political westerns. In The Big Gundown a railroad tycoon wants  bounty hunter Lee Van Cleef to run for Senate, but first he must chase down a Mexican peon accused of raping and murdering a child.

The movie has polygamous Mormon pioneers, an isolated ranch owned by a widow who lives alone with brutal, barely human ranch hands; there's a monastery where the hungry, fleeing Cuchilla eats communion wafers like potato chips. There's a monocled aristocratic German with an ornate European revolver. Van Cleef keeps catching up with Cuchilla and he keeps escaping. 

And it turns out that Mexican authorities are after Cuchillo, too, because was a Juarez supporter.

Far better than most spaghetti westerns and more serious than anything Leone made.

Directed by Sergio Sollima, with Tomas Milian, Walter Barnes and Nieves Navarro.

Available on the Criterion Channel.