Shot in the Roman countryside in 1924, with the provisional title La nostra patria [Our Fatherland], this is often cited as a patriotic, pro- Fascist film. On the contrary it is a film “en plein air”, in which Ghione, in the costume of a gaucho (not unmindful of that worn by Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) brings to life a horseman. “The film had some difficulty with the censorship, which left little intact from the scene of the rustic duel; with the obligation, moreover, to suppress the intertitle: “How tall – too tall – you are… so, I want to try to shorten you” (Vittorio Martinelli, Il cinema muto italiano. 1924-1931). This is the last film directed by Ghione, in which he again took up the theme dear to serial literature of the illegitimate son of an aristocratic line, unfortunately it was not a happy end, except for the love of Gioia.

Denis Liotti