The Return of Ringo

The civil war ends and Montgomery Brown comes home. The town has changed: a family has taken it over and controls the square, the sheriff and the land. His wife is about to marry that man and he has never seen his daughter. Nobody recognises him; his face is under a beard and nobody expected him back. He settles in under a false identity and starts working as a Mexican labourer. Duccio Tessari directs. Giuliano Gemma takes the lead. The narrative is taken straight from the Odyssey: a man returning home, unrecognised in his own house, the suitors around his wife, and the revealing of his identity at the end. The film does not hide the resemblance. It belongs to the first wave of Italian westerns and counts among the most accomplished of that period; the same team had made a film with the same character a year earlier, and this is an entirely separate narrative. Giuliano Gemma was among the best known Italian western actors of the time and the part here is built on waiting rather than fighting. The pace is slower than the genre average; the violence is kept for the end. The music is by Ennio Morricone. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian westerns and classical narrative structures. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the characters are types, and the ending resolves as expected.