Der Schuh des Manitu (Manitu’s Shoe)

... is an art film! Indeed, Der Schuh des Manitu is so good that not even critics know quite what to make of it. »Bully« Herbig’s Manitu’s Shoe will wax with age and repeated bookings to go down in film history as the greatest German production since Münchhausen and the biggest box office hit since Die Drei von der Tankstelle. Forget that statistic that Manitu drew a home audience of well over 10.5 million and is fast closing in on a third Golden Screen Award ­ to say nothing of sinking the Titanic at the Austrian box office.

       Let’s just rank Michael Herbig among Germany’s foremost directorial talent. For: Manitu is a hilarious spoof of Karl May’s Winnetou-Shatterhand pulp-fiction classics, with the big laugh on Harald Reinl’s Der Schatz der Silbersee (The Treasure of Silver Lake). Manitu is the answer to Kevin Kostner’s Dancing with Wolves, the first American art film using English subtitles for Indian palaver, although in Bully’s film what the Indians say is gone with the wind. Manitu was »inspired« by Italo-Westerns, just like Sergio Leone was inspired by Akira Kurosawa, Rainer Werner Fassbinder by Detlev Sierck, Charlie Chaplin by René Clair, and Abel Gance by D.W. Griffith. If Bully »stole« anything from anybody, then it was probably from Way Out West by Laurel and Hardy.

       Manitu is the first German film, to my knowledge, that stars Bully in a double role using an ef-ex technique discarded by Eugen Schüfftan in Metropolis. That Michael Herbig also happened to produce, direct, and nail down the sets to keep them from being blown away, well, anybody can do that. Careful, Bully said his next production will really be an art film!

Ronald Holloway