Lo chiamavano King comes from the 1971 western known as His Name Is King. Its music accompanies Django and Schultz as they leave after the sheriff episode and turns the German's name into a cinematic link.
A theme from another western finds a new King
Luis Bacalov composed the music for Lo chiamavano King, the 1971 western directed by Giancarlo Romitelli. Django Unchained brings back its main theme after the episode in which Schultz kills the sheriff and explains his status as a wanted fugitive. The departure from the town therefore becomes a moment of musical affirmation: the duo can carry on along the road after a situation that seemed destined to end with them surrounded by the local authorities.
The name King creates an immediate association with Dr King Schultz. That coincidence allows a song from another story to seem to comment on the presence of Christoph Waltz's character. However, it does not turn the western of 1971's protagonist into the dentist's secret biography. The lyric's references belong to an earlier work and should not be used as proof of relatives, revenge or episodes that Django Unchained does not confirm.
The difference matters because Tarantino works with music that arrives loaded with meaning. The selection may draw on a word, an attitude or a memory of the genre without transferring every fact from the original plot. The viewer recognises an affinity and the film uses it, but that affinity remains a relationship between works. It does not automatically become narrative information spoken by a character within the scene.
The theme adds a legendary dimension to Schultz at an early point in the journey. Up to then we have seen him negotiate, observe and act with a mixture of courtesy and sudden violence. The music condenses that impression into a departure that seems to confirm his command of the situation. Django, who is still learning how to read his companion, shares with the audience the discovery of a man whose professional appearance does not fully explain his trade.
Law as an instrument of staging
The sheriff episode shows that Schultz does not rely solely on gun speed. He understands paperwork and uses language to alter the interpretation of what he has just done. What seems to be the killing of the local authority's highest official is later presented as the execution of a wanted fugitive. The scene builds his power through a combination of violence, information and the ability to manage the conversation.
The music arrives once that demonstration has already had its effect. It is not needed for Schultz to set out the legal argument, but it turns the departure into a kind of stylised confirmation. The character has created a problem before the town's eyes and then redefined its terms. The theme allows the viewer to take the episode in as part of a professional identity that Django will have to understand during his apprenticeship.
It also matters that the two of them leave together. Django is not an outside observer who disappears after witnessing the German's skill. His immediate future becomes tied to that way of acting. The sequence offers a first experience of how knowledge of the rules can open up space within a hostile environment. It does not guarantee equality between them, but it establishes an association that the film will develop through work, conversation and shared decisions.
The musical tone keeps the episode from being trapped in a purely bureaucratic register. Papers and bounties are essential, but the film remains a western that creates memorable figures. The song takes the outcome of a negotiation and turns it into movement. The walk out of town sends the characters on to the next stretch of the road, leaving behind a situation that had focused everyone's attention.
Bacalov between presentation and learning
The presence of Bacalov in the film brings together different functions. The opening theme Django had announced the protagonist's figure; Lo chiamavano King here highlights a facet of Schultz. It is not necessary to imagine a rigid system in which each composer belongs exclusively to one character. The selection is more flexible: different pieces can illuminate moments and relationships that change over the course of the story.
In this case, the borrowing links the profession of bounty hunter to a cinematic tradition that the viewer can recognise even without having seen Romitelli's film. The voice, melody and momentum of the theme offer an emphatic presentation of a figure who rides and acts according to his own calculations. That energy suits Schultz, even though the film retains distinctive traits that do not depend on the musical reference.
For Django, the episode represents an expansion of the possible world. He has just come out of a condition in which others decided his path and he watches a man capable of getting through a threat by combining different resources. The music helps make that demonstration memorable, but the later learning will also show limits and contradictions. Schultz can handle certain rules without controlling the whole slave system or all of his own reactions.
Lo chiamavano King therefore works both as an indirect introduction and as a transition. Its title speaks to the dentist's name, its origin recalls another western and its placement celebrates a departure that is provisionally successful. None of those functions require inventing a previous story for Schultz. The power of the borrowing lies in the relationship it creates before our eyes: two men leave the town behind and the music grants them, for that stretch of the journey, a greater scale than that of the incident just resolved.
More context in the Django Unchained guide.