Winnetou III : The Desperado Trail Review

1965

Dir: Harald Reinl

Cast: Lex Barker, Pierre Brice, Rick Battaglia, Ralf Wolter, Carl Lange, Sophie Hardy, Veljko Maricic, Aleksander Gavric, Slobodan Dimitrijevic

The third part of the the Winnetou trilogy was in fact the seventh entry in the series. After Reinl had completed Winnetou II, both Albert Vohrer and Harald Philip had made films with the Winnetou character in it, but with Stewart Granger replacing Lex Barker as Winnetou's white brother. While the Old Surehand movies were slightly tongue in cheek, this movie, with Harald Reinl again in the director's chair, turns back to the original ponderousness of the series. The story is once again about villains trying to provoke an Indian war in order to confiscate the oil that has been found on their lands, but this time it has been seasoned with a melancholic sauce of Winnetou worrying about the survival of his people (or the native Americans in general) and having premonitions of his own death. Actually, the Winnetou character dies in a sacrificial act in the last minutes of the movies, making this the saddest entry in the series. But of course his death was not the end of the series. Some guys never give up.

Although the script is more focused than in the meandering Winnetou II, the film works better in parts than as a whole. Some story elements, like villain Rollins (Battaglia) using Winnetou's knife to frame him for the murder of a young Jacarilla brave, are well-handled, but others, especially those with a more comical edge, will make modern viewers feel rather awkward. Morever, watching this movie, we become aware of the limitations of both Harald Reinl as a director, and Karl May as a story teller. Reinl is a competent director of adventure movies, but some of the more dramatic scenes in Winnetou III are so pompous they become downright embarrassing. May's stories offer good elements for action-oriented movies, but don't really pay off in a more serious context. The hinge point of Karl May's vision on the West, is the opposition between the noble savage and the renegade Indian, each one seconded by white man, respectively the benevolent frontiersman and the greedy businessman. While glorifying the purity of the noble savage, May could not escape from the idea that the noble savage was a Christian in the making: all you had to do, was bring them into contact with the Christian faith to awaken his religious consciousness. This idea is illustrated in Winnetou III in the scene in which Old Shatterhand and Winnetou travel to Santa Fe and the latter is touched by the sound of church bells ringing. The sentimental hodge-podge finally results in Winnetou offering his life to save that of his friend, by putting himself between Old Shatterhand and the bullet from villain Battaglia's rifle.

As usual, Reinl makes good use of those magnificent Croatian locations. A scene in which Winnetou escapes from his persecutors by using his swimming and diving skills, belongs to the most beautiful of the entire series. For the scene with Battaglia shooting buffaloes, stock material was used (previously used in Winnetou I), and there's a scene near the end with rafts and oil fires, that seems to be inspired by a similar scene in From Russia with Love. The film also contains some of the most horrifying examples of horse-tripping you'll ever see (if your censor doesn't cut them). Previously to the film's release, production company Rialto hinted that Winnetou would be killed in the movie, which led to spontaneous protests organized by the children's magazines. Battaglia was booed at the premiere and later confessed that people continued complaining about his vile act for years, eve though several films (all presented as prequels) had been made with Brice as Winnetou in the meantime. When Reinl asked him again for a Winnetou movie, he allegedly answered: Only if I don't have to kill the hero!