Winnetou believes in the good - with Sergio Leone, there
is only evil. In the 1960s, westerns from Europe are turning a genre around
that it bangs.
Author: Franz
Kasperski
Let's go back to 1962. Suddenly Westerns are being shot
in Europe. And they could not be more different.
There are the Karl May adaptations: Winnetou and Old
Shatterhand fight together for the good, beautiful and true and thus have great
success. The films are marked by the unshakable certainty that the good will
ultimately prevail.
Almost at the same time, the opposite is true of Italy:
spaghetti westerns with heroes who are guaranteed not to fight for the good,
but for a handful of dollars. They are cynical. Callously.
The "Frontier Western": White heroes in the
wild West
Until then Westerns came mainly from America. A large part
of these classic westerns are busy transfiguring the colonization of the West
and the fight of white soldiers and settlers against the Indians.
The part of the American genre that deals with this
advancing occupation is called the "Frontier Western." Frontier does
not mean the national border. But this invisible line, to which the settlement
already reaches. Behind it: wilderness and savages.
Who owns the West?
Western expert Benjamin Hembus says: "Directors like
John Ford and William Wyler have tried to show what people are doing when they
try to settle America alone or in a small group.
What happens when you move into an area where the rules
of civilization do not work? In which everyone makes his own rules? "It
was a country," says Hembus, "where many went to, who otherwise had
no chance."
The Frontier Western tells of the unquestioned right of
the Whites to take this land. Indians are considered primitive savages.
John Ford and his
heroes
In the Frontier Western, "Indians have no
honor". That's the way it was in 1948 in "Fort Apache" by John
Ford with Henry Fonda and John Wayne. The positive drawn white hero is a
gentleman soldier.
The role of the White Heroes is summed up by director
John Ford: "We've had a lot of men who were considered great heroes, and
they know damn well they were not. But it's good for the country as if it has
heroes to look up to. "
Thus, "Fort Apache" becomes "a visually
arresting glorification of bloody deeds," as the New York Herald Tribune
writes.
John Ford will not stick to his early Indian image in
later years. He will revise his attitude and show the white settlement as
expulsion and murder of the indigenous people.
Noble friends:
Winnetou and Old Shatterhand
As early as 1962, a different image of the Indians
appeared in Europe: this year, the first "Winnetou" film is being
made. Winnetou and Old Shatterhand: This is the intercultural cinema friendliest
par excellence.
The Apache chief is not the primitive savage from the
Western Frontier. He looks like Karl May described him: "His face was
elegantly cut, almost Roman, the color a dull light brown with a bronze breath.
He made a deep impression on me."
A new type of evil occurs: the unscrupulous greedy, who
enriches himself at the expense of others. Mostly he is white.
In "Winnetou I" it is about a railway line, the
villain is called Santer. In "Winnetou II" there are oil deposits,
the evil name is Forrester. "Treasure in the Silver Lake" is about a
treasure and the villain is called Cornel Brinkley.
Winnetou and the
good in man
The Winnetou films, says Western expert Benjamin Hembus,
would therefore have convinced and endured, "because you want to believe
in the good in people". Because the audience admired this friendship
between Old Shatterhand and Winnetou. Because from the films, the firm belief
has spoken that the noble will win. And that Indians are noble anyway.
International
success of the “Black Forest Western”
The Winnetou films arrive, also internationally.
"The first continental film that did not imitate the American
Western" is to be read in England.
In France, the Cahiers du Cinema wrote: "A Black
Forest Western who does not pretend to be like John Ford, but cooks his own
soup excellently."
These films are due to the 11-year-old son of producer
Horst Wendlandt. He advises his father to film Karl May.
Wendlandt brings the best directors he has on hand:
Harald Reinl and Alfred Vohrer. These were, according to Hembus, "terrific
entertainment directors who knew exactly how to tell such a thing. There were
still the plain Indians that had their lands were taken away from the them, but
actually this was the classic entertainment cinema. "
Hard cynics: the
spaghetti or Italo western
At the same time, the year is 1964, Sergio Leone shot
“For a Fistful of Dollars”. The film is set in Mexico after the American Civil
War. Two rival clans fight each other.
Good cannot be found here, only evil. Between the two
camps is Joe, played by Clint Eastwood, who gets himself hired for money.
No values, only
dollars
Spaghetti westerns are far from the worldview of Winnetou
films. And from the classic American view that there is a hero with a "good"
canon of values who stands up for the law has also remained nothing. There is
no such canon of values anymore. And that the bad guys are punished is not safe
anymore.
"It was clear to the heroes of the Italo-Western:
They fight only for themselves and nothing else. They are clever, cynical, with
a cool macho appearance, "says Hembus." This has been very well
received by the audience of the student movement in Europe's cinemas. They no
longer believed the American heroes with their values anyway."
Clint Eastwood
lets the cash register ring
"For a Fistful of Dollars" found a very successful
audience, the reviews are devastating. Leone continues unabated and the
"Fistful of Dollars" becomes a trilogy. Clint Estwood also makes
money which allows the Leone the film to become a milestone.
1968. Protests, student movement throughout Europe, the
left discourse seized millions. One of them is Bernardo Bertolucci, who wrote
the story for “Once Upon a Time in the West”.
He says about this time: "Everything we did back
then, whether we ate pizza, drank wine or wrote screenplays, was
political."
Sergio Leone
brings the zeitgeist in the Western
Leone, the director, and Bertolucci, the writer, watch
everything they love about westerns for two months and ask themselves: How do
you tell the West in 1968, out of the spirit of those days, without being
misguided?
America is flopping "Once Upon a Time in the
West". Also because the American film hero Henry Fonda plays the killer
Frank in it. "The Americans did not want to see Henry Fonda as a child
murderer. That was the man who had played Lincoln, "says Hembus.
"Once Upon a
Time in the West" inspires Europe
In Europe, however, the success of the critics and the
public had been overwhelming. "The film ran in a cinema in Paris with two
performances per day for 48 months," says Hembus. "There was
something in Europe about the zeitgeist."
There's an attitude that shows Leone's gaze from the
outside on the American dream: Morton, the evil master, is dying in a miserable
puddle. When dying, his face sinks down into the filthy mud. At that moment he
hears the sound of the ocean.
The idea of America lies between a puddle and the dream
of the ocean. The killer Frank watches him die and spits out his chewing
tobacco.
In the end, only
Claudia Cardinale remains
"Once Upon a Time in the West" makes a woman
the actual heroine. Claudia Cardinale is the only one left, the rest: dead or
behind the horizon. She continues on.
Sergio Leone said full-bodied, that was for the Western
"the emergence of the American matriarchy". And actually he said
everything now. There is only one story he wants to tell, that of an old gunman
and his very young admirer: "My Name is Nobody".
Terence Hill is
Nobody
"My name is Nobody" is realized in 1973. Leone
designed and produced it. It was staged by his former assistant Tonino Valerii.
The film takes place in New Mexico in 1898. Nobody,
played by Terence Hill, meets his idol for the first time, the gunslinger Jack
Beauregard, played by Henry Fonda. When Nobody meets his idol, he is an old man
who just wants to get out.
A love letter to
the genre
"It was a very personal story for Leone, who sought
a partnership between a young savage and an older man in all his films,"
says Hembus.
Leone wanted to give the audience once a figure who loves
the Western as much as the audience itself. So to speak, a deputy on the
screen. That's the character Nobody. The film is for Hembus "a single love
letter to the genre".
The old man and
the boy
Beauregard has to wear glasses so he can hit anything.
150 heavily armed riders of the "Wild Bunch" are to appear on the
horizon.
And because the riders carry dynamite in their flashing
saddlebags, Beauregard is supposed to shoot at the saddlebags. What sounds like
an explosive finale is more than just a crack.
Circles close
In this finale is a piece of Western history: There is
Fonda, who had already shot with Ford and when Frank in "Once Upon a
Time" to Sergio Leone's smiling killer was.
And on the film set, the assistant director hides behind
a bush: he looks through the binoculars and is about to shout as soon as the
Wild Bunch appears. This assistant director is the son of old Wendlandt, who
ten years earlier had told his father to film Winnetou.
And then there's Nobody. Played by Terence Hill, who made
his first big appearance in a German western - in Winnetou. Terence Hill was
then called Mario Girotti.
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