Treasure of Silver Lake Review

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< Schatz im Silbersee, Der


  • 1962
  • Dir: Harald Reinl
  • Cast: Lex Barker, Pierre Brice, Götz George, Karin Dorr, Ralf Wolter, Eddi Arent


Made in 1962, in a pre-Leone Europe, this was the first adaptation of a Karl May novel set in the West, featuring Old Shatterhand, the famous frontiersman, and his friend Winnetou, chief of the Apaches. The movie was a phenomenal success, and made European film makers aware of the possibilities to create their own versions of a typical American action genre such as the western. In this sense, the Karl may movies created a cultural and financial context for the spaghetti westerns.


Der Schatz im Silber See was not the first Winnetou novel, so at the start of the movie, Winnetou and Old Shatterhand are already ‘blood brothers’. Their first encounters would be the subject of the second Karl Movie, Winnetou I. The choice for this particular novel, Der Schatz im Silber See, was probably suggested by the fact that it’s one of his more ‘adult’ novels of the series. The body count is relatively high and the book’s main villain, a red-haired renegade army officer, is a brute who burns people in their houses. In the movie this is all watered down considerably, still the violence is more graphic than in most later adaptations and good old Winnetou and Old Shatterhand almost seem noble intruders in a more gritty (and more interesting) film..


The story is quite simple and combines two themes that would turn out to be particularly prolific within the European western: the treasure hunt and the vengeance tale. A sadistic villain, called Colonel Brinckley, has heard rumors about a treasure hidden near a so-called Silver Lake; a map, torn into two different parts, reveals the exact location of the treasure. Brinckley has killed the owner of the first half of the map, a man called Engel, and is now in search of the second half, which is in possession of Engel’s friend Patterson. But Engel had a grown-up son, Fred, who now seeks revenge for the violent death his father. Fred teams up with Winnetou and Old Shatterhand and eventually they all meet at the Silver Lake.


Winnetou and Old Shatterhand only appear in the second half of the book (the main character is the more riotous Old Firehand, not present in the movie), but have been given more central parts here. The character of Fred Engel has also been altered: in the book he’s a child, in the movie he’s a old enough to avenge his father and have a love interest, Ellen Patterson, the daughter of his father’s best friend. A young man filling the boots of his father is a theme very dear to Karl May, and the Fred Engel character seems to be based on the famous Martin Bauman from another May novel Der Sohn des Bärenjägers. All in all the story is well-told, the first half is a bit diffuse, but the pace is picked up in the second half, which breathes the true spirit of the adventure movie. Director Reinl never was a great action director, but he knew how to use the Croation landscape to maximum effect; the scenes set around and on the lake are breathtakingly beautiful. The action scenes seem a bit speeded up to make them look more impressive; instead they create a sort of Comedy Capers effect.


Although Barker and Brice are top-billed as Winnetou and Shatterhand, the opposition between Colonel Brickley and Fred Engel is more essential to the narrative and the film works best when it concentrates on their actions. Herbert Lom, best known as the neurotic commissioner Dreyfus from the Pink Panther movies, turns in a deliciously maniacal performance as the red-haired Colonel Brinckley. Fred Engel is played by German actor Götz George, who would become a national monument as commissioner Horst Schimanski in the long-running TV series Tatort; he’s in his early twenties here, and his physique and athletic abilities are impressive. Karin Dor is a special delight as the lovely Ellen Patterson; she’s repeatedly tied to poles and gazed at by the villains, but never touched by a single one of them. Comic relief is provided by a fashionable butterfly collector and a trapper who insist on telling everything on rhyme. Their scenes belong to the dreariest of the movie, and these unfunny things would only become worse in the years to come. Most of the supporting actors like George, Dor, Wolter and Arent would make regular appearances in the Winnetou series.


Karl May was no Dickens or Tolstoy and his portrayal of Native Americans is laughable, but he showed these people in a favorable light in a time when this was not yet customary. His books have probably done more for their cause than most others, written by better writers who knew more about the subject. Entire generations have grown up with Winnetou, Old Shatterhand and all those ‘Oldies’ (but goodies). From a historic point of view, Der Schatz im Silbersee is a must see for every spaghetti western fan. But I don’t know what people who have not grown up with Karl May make of it.




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--By Scherpschutter

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