It all started with a little boy. Matthias, the son of the West Berlin film producer Horst Wendlandt, got his hands on Karl May’s adventure novel “The Treasure in the Silver Lake” when he was nine years old and devoured it. »Dad, you absolutely have to make a film of “Treasure in Silver Lake”. This is a great book and something different than your endless Edgar Wallace films!« Wendlandt Senior thought about this request. Until now he had only heard of Karl May’s books. But after surveys among his circle of acquaintances, he was convinced that May film adaptations could be profitable at the box office. Of course it had to be produced cheaply. Locations in North America were not included. But he got the tip that there were landscapes in what was then Yugoslavia that looked similar to those in May’s novels. Wendlandt gained an experienced screenwriter, Harald G. Petersson. Director Harald Reinl was a veteran, politically right-wing conservative, and brought his wife Karin Dor with him as the leading actress. Wendlandt won former Tarzan actor Lex Barker for the leading role of Old Shatterhand, and Hollywood star Herbert Lom (once an emigrant from Prague) was hired to play the villain for a high fee. After test recordings with other actors, Wendlandt finally found the Frenchman Pierre Brice to play the noble Apache Winnetou, who had already appeared in French, Italian and Spanish films, but was stagnating in his career. He got the lowest fee. He was also dissatisfied with his role, as he saw himself as a conversation actor, but as Winnetou he only had to look heroic and hardly speak any dialogue. But that met exactly what the audience expected. The first film in the May series was a phenomenal success. The first film with Winnetou and Old Shatterhand opened in Stuttgart 61 years ago in December.
The fact that “60 Years of Winnetou” is now being celebrated is an advertising ploy, because Horst Wendlandt had acquired the rights for the Winnetou trilogy in advance, and in the following years he produced the next parts with the proven team, of which “Winnetou – 1 “Part” premiered in Munich exactly sixty years ago. There is now a restored version that, according to the distributor, is “as sharp as ever” and is available in four-channel technology for home cinema. The veteran stars of the series Mario Adorf, Mario Girotti (Terence Hill) and Uschi Glas promoted this. You could also have asked Gojko Mitić, because the then Belgrade sports student played the Apache White Raven, the brother of Ribanna (Karin Dor), in Part 2 and was Winnetou’s opponent in 1964’s “Among Vultures” as Schoschone Wokadeh. As is well known, he was soon discovered by Defa for “The Sons of the Great Bear” (1965/66), then played the leading roles in twelve other Defa “Indian films” and even became the Winnetou of the Karl May games between 1992 and 2006 in Bad Segeberg.
Mitić felt most comfortable in his “Indian career” at Defa because the clothing and customs of the Native Americans were particularly authentically reproduced there. No Apache has ever looked the way costume designer Irms designed Pauli Winnetou.
Matthias Wendlandt had switched from fairy tale books to Karl May adventures when he was nine and had no idea that he would again be dealing primarily with fairy tale inventions. Karl May, who grew up on the edge of the Ore Mountains as the son of a weaver family, was able to study to become a teacher, but was prone to overly imaginative stories, had a past as an impostor and ultimately found his calling in the booming field of entertainment literature. He had never experienced the milieu of his novels dealing with North American natives and had read the details.
In nine German cinemas – this Thursday only – you can immerse yourself once again in Karl May’s half-baked western world and admire the latest technological developments.
2023-12-14 00:40:42
#Cinema #lowest #fee
