Years before Italian
director Duccio Tessari dabbled in the giallo subgenre with his ornate and
celebrated murder mystery thriller The
Bloodstained Butterfly, he worked as an uncredited screenwriter on the
first entry of Sergio Leone’s Man with No
Name spaghetti western trilogy A
Fistful of Dollars starring Clint Eastwood.
After the box office success of Leone’s loose remake of Akira Kurosawa’s
Yojimbo and of the sequels which
inevitably followed, Tessari decided to write, produce and direct his own spin
on the spaghetti western, offering up the antithesis of Clint Eastwood’s
nameless hero in the form of two films made within the same year: A Pistol for Ringo and The Return of Ringo.
Starring Giuliano Gemma/Montgomery
Wood from Dario Argento’s Tenebrae in
the role of Montgomery “Ringo” Brown, the two-part action film series offer up
a unique take on the swashbuckling lone hero in the old west. Cited as one of Quentin Tarantino’s top 20
Italowesterns, audiences are provided with two sides of the same coin that
couldn’t be more different while remaining inextricably bound by the sharp and
fast shooter’s journey. While neither
film made a splash in the US marketplace upon initial release, Tessari’s Ringo series present both a solid and
frequently humorous western before shifting gears entirely with the second
entry, giving moviegoers two pictures that compliment and contrast one another
a great deal and stand out as some of the finest examples the spaghetti western
subgenre has to offer!
A Pistol for Ringo
The first entry in the
two-part film series, A Pistol for Ringo finds
the clean cut, well dressed, confident, cool and often selfish wisecracking “Angel
Face” Ringo (Giuliano Gemma) taking out four gunmen before being incarcerated
for manslaughter. His imprisonment is
short lived when the fast-handed shooter is asked by the sheriff for help after
a band of Mexican bandits rob the local bank and take refuge in wealthy Major
Clyde’s (Antonio Casas) ranch. After
Clyde and his daughter Ruby (Lorella De Luca) find themselves hostage under the
deadly grip of bandit Sancho (Fernando Sancho), the film becomes a frequently
comic thriller as Ringo must outwit the bandits in a race against time as
hostages are picked off one by one until they’re allowed to go free.
An exceedingly simple and
direct premise which freely mixes tragedy with wicked humor, Tessari’s
formulaic but beautifully rendered Spaghetti western draws much gusto from
Gemma’s performance as the fearless and sharp scoundrel Ringo. Sporting a clean-shaven grin while only
drinking milk as a ‘matter of principle’, Ringo is the polar opposite of the
then popular Man with No Name featuring
Clint Eastwood, frequently self-satisfied, amused and unconcerned about the
future. Unlike most swift gunman
prominently featured in these Spaghetti westerns, Ringo is in it for the money
and could either side with the hostages or the bandits depending on who makes
the better offer.
With lush and scenic
panoramic cinematography by Francisco Marín aided by
a thrilling if not occasionally comedic score by Spaghetti western maestro
Ennio Morricone, A Pistol for Ringo is
a taut, entertaining and frequently amusing thriller that maintains a keen
balance between satisfying expectations of the genre while providing fans with
enough deadpan laughs to round out the package.
Second to the dusty Australian Wake
in Fright, A Pistol for Ringo also
ranks as one of those movies set during Christmas in a snowless desert heat
wave, tinging some of the shootouts with elements of slapstick as tree
ornaments explode amid the gunfire. As
such, it’s a bit of an escapist carefree entertainment but Tessari and Gemma
are clearly having a blast with the subgenre as we find ourselves rooting for
the wisecracking Ringo to make good on his reputation as one of the fastest
hands in the west.
Score:
The Return of Ringo
After the surprising box
office success of A Pistol for Ringo,
within the same year writer-director Duccio Tessari reteamed with Giuliano
Gemma and his prior cast and crew for a sequel which proceeds to subvert each
and every expectation fans of the Ringo series
came away with in The Return of Ringo. A loose reworking of Homer’s Odyssey with a vastly different “hero”
than the one people were used to, The
Return of Ringo finds its hero returning home from the Union Army in the
American Civil War. Seemingly broken by
the war, we find Ringo unkempt, quiet, depressed and having switched to booze
instead of milk. Going into hiding,
Ringo disguises himself as a Mexican before sauntering into town to discover
his wife Helen (Lorella De Luca again) has been kidnapped by Esteban (Fernando
Sancho again) and his estate taken over by bandits.
Ignoring the first film, it’s
central character and the picture he inhabits all but completely subvert
audience expectations, aiming for a far more mystical, less dialogue heavy and
often moody endeavor we’re not always sure how to take. Morricone’s score this time around is more
prominently in the forefront with heavier (arguably overwrought) themes
dominating the soundtrack and Tessari heightens the artificial realism with the
constant use of wind machines blowing dust and hay about like a violent
snowstorm. As with most spaghetti
westerns cranked out like no tomorrow in this period of cinema history, much of
if not all the cast members from the previous film show up again here, some of
whom switch roles from hero to villain while others simply reprise their parts
from before.
While a denser and more
complicated effort compared to the first film, The Return of Ringo much like last year’s Twin Peaks: The Return spends a majority of the time delaying the
hero’s return to the former self audiences know and love. It’s a deliberately frustrating tactic given
what we know about Ringo’s ‘principles’ and his character to see the once
confident and alert gunman falling over himself in a depressed, drunken
stupor. Though based upon Homer’s Odyssey, unlike the previous film which
set up the exceedingly simply premise within the first fifteen minutes, we’re
not really sure where The Return of Ringo
is going even well into the picture until maybe the last thirty
minutes.
The result is a genuinely
strange, somewhat meandering and sometimes tonally messy but still engaging
spaghetti western with a satisfying conclusion to the two-film series. Not as satisfying as the first film but one
has to laud the filmmakers for taking viewers on such a diametrically opposed
direction.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki