Manitou’s Shoe: Winnetou Meets Bavaria

Manitou`s Shoe Vol.1 - Click here for funny video clips

By Maxi Morosow & Oskar Sommerlade

For our group project, we selected the German movie Manitou’s Shoe, which was released in 2001 and directed by Michael “Bully” Herbig. The genres of the movie are primarily comedy and Western.

When we thought about finding a popular artifact from German or European culture that reflects some notion of the “American West”, the Karl May productions about Winnetou and the “Wild West” came to our minds immediately. But after a while we realized that we hadn’t really been much in contact with those books and movies while we were children or teenagers. It had been more our parents and grandparents who had told us about it. There was one movie, however, that was released when we were children and that we could not forget: Manitou’s Shoe.

In 2001, the movie had been a huge success and was one of our favorite discussion topics with our friends at school. Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that we could still remember most of the plot and many of its funny scenes. It seems as Herbig didn’t omit any possible jokes for his kind of Western movie: Indians who dig up a folding chair instead of a hatchet, a gay Indian twin brother, a Greek friend who owns a tavern and many other things.

The plot orients itself towards the Karl May productions of the 1960’s. It is often said that the movie is a direct German parody of Western movies. The plot of Manitou’s Shoe also takes place in the Wild West in the 19th century. Back in the day the cowboy Ranger saved the life of the Indian boy Abahachi. Afterwards they became inseparable friends and blood brothers. One day Abahachi decides to buy a new saloon and borrows money from the Shoshone Indians. However, Abahachi gets very unlucky: Not only does the real estate agent, a man from Wyoming called Santa Maria, betray him, he also kills “False Rabbit”, the son of the Indian chief. Due to this, Abahachi gets into trouble with the whole tribe of the Shoshone. In order to clear his debt, he wants to find a treasure that is hidden at a place called “Manitou’s Shoe”. Therefore, he quickly looks for his former girlfriend Uschi, his gay twin brother Winnetouch and his Greek friend Dimitri. Each of them owns a quarter of the treasure map that will lead them to this place. However, Santa Maria also learns about the treasure and awaits Abahachi, Ranger and their friends at “Manitou’s Shoe”.

There are multiple reasons why this movie can be considered a tongue-in-cheek depiction of notions (and sometimes also stereotypes) concerning the American West. Of course it is, as stated above, very loosely based on Karl May’s works, which makes it an interesting case of how certain images and conceptions are „filtered“ through various media. That is to say, Manitou’s Shoe isn’t as much an interpretation of the American West as rather an interpretation of the American West as seen by Karl May, but also with the addition of satirical humor.

One can see in many cases that the movie not only picks up on some common clichés credited largely to May, but also reverses them for comical purposes. For instance, the character of Ranger highly resembles that of May’s Old Shatterhand in the sense that both of them are hardened, leather-wearing gunslingers with telling names. Ranger, however, at one point emphatically confesses being tired of all the usual aspects of life in the Wild West such as “being bound to some stake every other day”. Like his blood brother Abahachi, he also speaks in a broad Bavarian dialect, which mocks the overall seriousness of these supposedly “Western” characters.

Amidst all of this whimsicalness, it is still often possible to find some traces of the more pragmatic ideals that the American West embodies. Even Winnetouch, who would stick out like a sore thumb in every “serious” Western movie with his pink clothes and openly gay behavior, is still able to build up a successful business by running a beauty salon out in the open prairie. What this shows is that the fields of the West can be conquered even by the most uncommon individuals. The aforementioned Dimitri, on the other hand, may seem like just some other “fish out of the water” type of character at first glance, but also illustrates the issue of immigration and cultural diversity that was prevalent in the American West as well.

More than ten years after the release of this movie, one can still sense the profound impact that it had on the perception of the American West in German popular culture. Before Manitou’s Shoe, people couldn’t speak of this subject without mentioning Karl May. Today it might seem that Herbig’s movie has taken that place.

Works Cited
Der Schuh des Manitu. Dir. Michael Herbig. Perf. Michael Herbig, Christian Tramitz, Rick Kavanian, Sky Du Mont, Marie Bäumer. Constantin Film, 2001. Film.