The Balkan Westerns of the Sixties (part 1)

By Sergey Lavrentiev 

First, in 1962, filmmakers from West Germany decided to film the stories of their compatriot Karl May (1842-1912), who wrote about the Wild West. In the USSR, his writings were not known, but in Germany they were far more popular than the works of James Fenimore Cooper or Thomas Mayne Reid.

At the heart of Karl May’s novels there are two characters: one Indian, named Winnetou, and the other white (sometimes Old Surehand, sometimes Old Shatterhand). The first film to be made about their adventures was The Treasure of Silver Lake (Der Schatz im Silbersee, Harald Reinl, 1962). It is not known whether director Reinl ever supposed that his film would only be the first in a long series of many other pictures featuring the two inseparable friends, but the success of the film had surpassed all expectations and soon, the producers launched the pipeline: from 1962 onwards, almost until the end of the sixties, each year marked the release of at least one new film about Winnetou on European screens. But what has all this got to do with the Balkans?

The German producers of the films, like their Italian counterparts who were shooting their ‘Spaghetti westerns’ in Spain, were looking for locations that were both spectacular and cheap. In the beginning, they had also considered Spain but, in the end, they found an even better (and cheaper) place: it was Yugoslavia.

After his historical quarrel with Stalin, Tito had started to build his relatively? liberal brand of socialism. And he was also a great western admirer. During the 1950s, US westerns were often shown on Yugoslav screens and they were very popular. More than one generation of young Yugoslav boys grew up with these movies. So when the Germans suggested a co-production, the Yugoslav comrades were happy to agree.

It proved to be the ideal partnership: the Balkan side was open and friendly, and the Germans were given total production freedom and low prices in addition to fantastic shooting locations in Croatia. Soon enough, Winnetou and his white brother received permanent residency in the “happiest barrack of the socialist camp”.

The results pleased everyone. After The Treasure of Silver Lake (which also received financing from the French), in 1963, Reinl shot “Winnetou”. Now, along with the French and the Germans, Italy was also credited among the producing countries, and the franchise was on a roll. During that same year, and with the same 3 countries as co-producers, another director, Hugo Fregonese, was called in to shoot Old Shatterhand with the same actors (Pierre Brice – Winnetou, Lex Barker – The White Brother). Then 1964 saw Winnetou 2 by Reinl, and Alfred Vohrer’s “Among the vultures”, where Lex Barker was replaced by Stewart Granger.

The Yugoslavs were involved in all these films, and not just as the country that provided the locations. All the films credit the Zagreb studio, Jadran Film, immediately after the name of the main German concern, indicating an equal partnership.

The Soviets would get to see some of these films later, but none of them were shown immediately after they appeared in the early 1960s. Instead, Khrushchev granted the opportunity to screen a real US western in the USSR.

The times they were a-changing. In 1959, Khrushchev made his historical visit to the United States, during which he also went to Hollywood, where he met Marilyn Monroe, Frank Capra, and Gary Cooper. A new film agreement was signed then, according to which The Magnificent Seven (1960) was purchased for Soviet distribution.

The Magnificent Seven became a landmark success and a social phenomenon in the Soviet Union. Between 1962 and 1964, the citizens of the USSR never tired of seeing the film. Tickets became impossible to get. Stadiums and other open areas were used for the projection when regular cinemas could no longer cope. All men wanted to dress like cowboys, and since there were no Soviet shops where one could buy jeans, hats and boots, the costumes were all made at home from scrap materials.

The most curious thing about the whole national craze that engulfed The Magnificent Seven is that, according to statistics, the picture was not a box-office champion. Evidently, the numbers had to be manipulated, but be that as it may, the fact remains that an American western was able to stir the Soviet public so much that they seemed to forget all about their allegiance to their communist identity and ideals in the process.

Party leaders began to grumble. First, they forbade children from watching it. Then, the classic ‘letters from the workers started appearing in the central press. Finally, in 1964, just before Khrushchev’s removal from the head of the party, the film was withdrawn from distribution, before its export license had expired.

In 1966, comrades from East Germany received the ‘advice’ to try their own hand at making a classical western with reds and whites. This they did, and the result was The Sons of Great Bear (Die Söhne der großen Bärin, by the Czech director Josef Mach). For this production, the East Germans also went to Yugoslavia, since they wanted to beat their Western compatriots and rivals on the “same battlefield”. Their co-producer was Bosna Film studios in Sarajevo. Sure enough, history had since proved that it was not possible to compete with the West in general, and in film production in particular, but until 1968, the communists did not abandon hope, so the East Germans decided to step into the ring and fight.

The Sons of Great Bear was the screen adaptation of a novel by Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, in which the Indians are portrayed as noble, while the whites are all bloodthirsty. This was, of course, an absolute must for the script to be approved. Ironically, the white villain’s name was Red Fox, but he was not that important. The important thing was that the noble Indian, played by the young, beautiful athlete Gojko Mitić, provided the youth of the socialist bloc with a credible star of their own: Mitić became the instant idol of millions.

The success of The Sons had satisfied the authorities. Of course, in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, where the film distribution system was wide open for ‘Western westerns’, the film could not compete with other American films of the genre. But in the other, more ‘ideologically unblemished’ states, the box-office results were encouraging.

The main difference between The Sons and the pictures made at the Jadran studios by the West Germans was in the central element of the plot structure. Winnetou is brave and noble, but he remains in the shadow of his pale-faced brother who is the main hero. The screen adaptations of Karl May’s novels are all about the good white guy who helps the Indians fight against the bad whites. In parentheses it should be noted that while the Ostern Sons was shot in Yugoslavia, Old Surehand became the first film of its rival West German series to be purchased for distribution in the USSR, during the short period of liberalization between October 1964 and August 1968 (the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia). Changing the title of the film, the Soviets accidentally emphasized its ‘white-guy bias’, naming it The Faithful Hand, Friend of Indians. Needless to say, the film was a big hit and made a lot of money for the Soviet distribution system, back in 1968.

Despite its reasonable success, the production of The Sons of Great Bear marked the end of an ambitious attempt by the East to beat the capitalists at the western genre. After that, the East Germans ceased to travel around the world in search of spectacular locations for big productions aimed at international audiences (The Sons never managed to find an audience in the West), and began to stamp their ‘right westerns’ for its own audience, as well as for the benefit of their most friendly markets: the post-1968 ‘normalized’ Czechoslovakia, the USSR, Bulgaria, and Mongolia.

 [To be continued]