My friend Winnetou

Television series
German title	My friend Winnetou
Original title	Winnetou le Mescaléro
Country of production	Germany , France , Switzerland
original language	German
year	1979
length	25 minutes
Episodes	14th
genre	Western film
production	Otto Fischer, Alex de Lesseps, Eduard Haas, Michael J. Canello
music	Peter Thomas
camera	Pierre Petit León Sánchez
cut	Pierre Houdain Bernard Bourgoin
First broadcast	July 4, 1980 (France) December 19, 1980 (Switzerland)
German-language first broadcast	May 2, 1980
occupation
Pierre Brice ( Christian Brückner ): Winnetou Ralf Wolter : Sam Hawkens Siegfried Rauch : Old Shatterhand Arthur Brauss : Lt. Robert Merril Eric Dô Hieu ( Peter Ehret ): Tashunko Gérard Buhr ( Holger Hagen ): Major Turner Jean-Claude Deret ( Horst Sachtleben ): Napoleon Charbonneau George Segal: Gottlieb Rosenda Monteros : Hehaka Win

Mein Freund Winnetou (Winnetou le Mescaléro; My friend Winnetou) is a 14-part television series by West German advertising television (WWF, Cologne) in co-production with Antenne 2 (Paris) and the Swiss radio and television company SRG (Bern), which began in 1979 very loosely based on Karl May and was broadcast in 1980 on the ARD's evening program. The series was also broadcast in seven parts of 60 minutes each in France and Switzerland.

Data

The shooting took place from January 22nd, 1979 to April 28th, 1979, including outdoor shots at the request of director Marcel Camus at "original locations" in Mexico, not far from the Apache reserves.

The music for the series was written by the German composer Peter Thomas (played under his direction by the 1st German Symphony Pop Orchestra ), who also wrote the music for the Karl May film Winnetou and his friend Old Firehand .

The television episodes were also released by Europe as a radio play series on record and compact cassette. The narrator is the actor Horst Frank .

In 1980 the Flammarion publishing house brought out a generously equipped 160-page photo book ( Winnetou le Mescalero ), which mainly contained photos that Pierre Brice's wife had taken during filming (some unused photos then appeared in the book Pierre - Wie ich dich see in 2005). However, the volume was only intended for the French market and was therefore only printed in French and is now a rarity.

action

While pursuing white bandits, Winnetou's companions, Old Bear and Little Bear, are killed and seriously injured. The photographer Napoleon Charbonneau, who happened to be passing by, made himself suspicious of Winnetou's condition in the eyes of the Pajute Indians who also appeared. Only the arrival of Old Shatterhand bailed him out. Winnetou is brought to the Pajutes and cared for. After his recovery he sets out with the Comaniac Tashunko to teach him some Indian tricks when they suddenly come across the survivors of a bandit attack on the stagecoach, agent of the Indian Affairs Office Vincent, his Indian wife Nalin and their son Peter. On the way to a nearby fort, they are attacked by Chiricahua Apaches led by Yaqui, a brother of Cochise .

Once at the fort, Winnetou immediately noticed the poor condition of the Indians camped around the fort. It seems as if his old friend Sam Hawkens (actual spelling: " Hawkens ") is to blame for this misery, because he makes schnapps for the workers of the railway company and they sell the alcohol on to the Indians. Sam Hawkens promises to remedy the situation. When Winnetou and Tashunko want to ride on, their horses have disappeared, obviously stolen by some bandits who also kidnapped two Indian women. These women belong to the Cheyenne tribe under the leadership of Chief Wolfszahn. Under the direction of Colonel Stevens, the whites want to build the railroad through his country and try to steal land from the Indians with cheap gifts and alcohol.

Tashunko falls in love with the Indian Winona, who is killed a little later in a white massacre in the Indian village. Winnetou calls the surrounding Indian tribes together for a council of war, while Colonel Stevens reinforces the guards in the railway camp because he fears an attack. Tashunko went into the net when he tried to find the murderers of Winona. Stevens wants to keep it as a pledge until Winnetou has persuaded the Indians to give up their village, but he sneaks into the camp at night and can free Tashunko.

Then, without informing Winnetou, the Indians actually raid the railroad workers' camp and kill all those they encounter, whereupon the army, under the direction of Lieutenant Merrill, sets out on a punitive expedition. Old Shatterhand and Sam Hawkens distract the soldiers so that Winnetou and Tashunko can ride into town, where the Old Bear, believed to be dead, is to be tried. Lieutenant Merrill, as the defense attorney for Old Bear, tries to get Winnetou to make a statement, but the bandits around Sammy Cook portray Winnetou as a liar. He is even said to have committed the robbery Cook committed on Old Bear himself. The photographer Charbonneau can then prove through his photographs that Winnetou is innocent.

Others

When casting the Old Shatterhand character, the early death of Lex Barker meant that another actor had to be used. In addition to Siegfried Rauch, Raimund Harmstorf and Karl-Michael Vogler (who previously played Kara Ben Nemsi in his own series) were shortlisted . The French director ultimately opted for Siegfried Rauch from Bavaria, whose relaxed manner convinced him.

You could shoot in old sets that were built specifically for Hollywood western productions, including John Wayne . Here Pierre Brice met Burt Lancaster , with whom he was able to talk extensively about his time in Italy.

When editing in the studio in Germany after filming, it was noticed that some of the scenes that were supposed to introduce the story at the beginning turned out to be unusable. Since Pierre Brice was playing Winnetou on the open-air stage in Elspe in the Sauerland at that time , the scenes were simply shot again there. Winnetou then rides from the green Elsper Rübenkamp through the completely different vegetation into the barren Mexican soil.

Series episodes

1. Traces of blood
2. A young Comanche
3. The man for Indian affairs
4. The duel
5. In the white fort
6. Sam Hawkens City
7. The fire horse
8. The flute
9. The great council of war
10. Tortured people
11. The revenge of the Cheyennes
12. Departure
13. The process
14. Old bear

Radio play title

1. Traces of blood
2. The duel
3. Sam Hawkens City
4. The fire horse
5. The great council of war
6. The revenge of the Cheyennes
7. The process
8. Original music from the series

various

• The soundtrack for the series was released on LP and on audio cassette under EUROPA 115 692.6
• After a French video and a Dutch DVD version, the series was also published in German by Koch Media in 2007 .
• A text excerpt, The time of conscience (the last chapter in the story of a child, for whose death the Indians are supposed to be responsible), is printed in: Karl May's traces in literature. Fifth collection , special issue of the Karl May Society No. 98/1993, pp. 88–95.

Web links

• karl-may-filme.de
• My friend Winnetou in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Sound carrier with the film music