"Treasure Island": The masterful ZDF four-part series on 3Sat

On January 4, 2022, 3sat will show the legendary ZDF four-part series “Die Schatzinsel” in full.

Frankfurt – Derrick on Treasure Island !? Sounds like a paradox, but in 1966 it was within your grasp. Horst Tappert, who gave the sometimes philosophical Munich chief inspector from 1974 to 1998 in 281 episodes of the ZDF series, which was sold in over 100 countries, was originally supposed to play the part of the charming but devious Long John Silver in the four-part Franco-German street sweeper “Treasure Island” (French title: “L’île au trésor”) embody.

The one-legged ship’s cook, who only makes friends with the young Jim Hawkins on the Hispaniola because he is in possession of the treasure map, he would have played without a toupee. He was in the final selection alongside Hannes Messemer. The award as the laughing third was awarded to Chief Inspector Claude Eustace Teal, who at the time was sucking pastilles in Germany in the British television series “Simon Templar” (title role: Roger Moore), popular Shakespeare mime Ivor Dean. The striking bald head turned out to be a real stroke of luck. Even the great Orson Welles did not come close to his interpretation of the eloquent Smut, who once sailed under the flag of the pirate Captain Flint, in the Artur Brauner cinema production six years later.

Dean (German dubbing voice: Alf Marholm) puts on Silver as a human catcher, but he does not shy away from being unwelcome confidantes who do not want to participate in his conspiracy to break the spine with his crutch. It is easy for him to wrap the romantically naive Jim Hawkins (interpreted with astonished countenance by Michael Ande) around his finger. As soon as the legendary exotic island is reached, he would like to let the son of an innkeeper who found the treasure map in the estate of the pirate Bill Bones jump over the blade. Likewise his companion, the level-headed Dr. David Livesey (Georges Riquier), the adventurous Justice of the Peace Squire John Trelawney (Jacques Dacqmine) and the grumpy Captain Alexander Smollet (Jacques Monod). In the course of 340 minutes, which can hardly be surpassed even for today’s viewing habits, seven loyal people have to defend themselves against 19 former crew members Flints.

“Treasure Island”: ZDF four-part series meticulously adheres to the template by Stevenson

Director Wolfgang Liebeneiner, who two years later also staged “Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure” for the congenial producer duo Walter Ulbrich (DEROPA Film- und Fernseh GmbH) and Henri Deutschmeister (Franco London Film), shot on 35- mm movie, which is why the four parts will not appear television-like in 2022 either. His direction and the script by Walter Ulbrich, who as producer and world literature expert also supervised editing and dubbing, meticulously adhered to the submission by Robert Louis Stevenson (November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh – December 3, 1894 in Vailima near Apia, Samoa ).

The Scottish writer, suffering from tuberculosis, who later wrote his eerie and at the same time fairytale love novella “The Bottle Imp” (1891, in this country known as “Das Flaschenteufelchen”) in the contemporary Samoan language and therefore only loved “Tusitala” (“narrator” by the locals) ), celebrated its first financial success with “Treasure Island”. The first print appeared from October 1, 1881 to January 28, 1882 as a multiple part in the magazine “Young Folks”. The adventure novel was published in book form in London in 1883, a German translation for the first time in 1897. Originally the volume was supposed to be called “The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys”. According to Stevenson’s own statements, characters and motifs are influenced by Daniel Defoe, Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving, among others. William Ernest Henley, Stevenson’s co-editor of the “London Journal”, was the model for the pirate Long John Silver as a foot amputee, a hard-drinking Scot.

The creator of the psychological horror novel “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” (1886, “The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”), which uses the doppelganger motif to address the phenomenon of split personality, revealed exactly where the island is , but not its readers. Probably in the Caribbean, maybe also in the South Pacific. For this he made a drawing of the treasure map, which was copied exactly for Ulbrich’s adaptation.

As in the novel, the events are told by the now grown-up Jim Hawkins. No less a person than Hellmut Lange took over the voiceover in the German version. The Berlin actor was to become a superstar three years later as the title hero of the “Lederstrumpferzählungen” (all four episodes on January 5th, also in 3sat) in another classic ZDF four-part adventure in Germany. The shooting took place in Brittany, Lake Garda and Corsica. There the coast and the inland were partly decorated as a tropical island, with agaves, rare flowers and some palm trees.

“Treasure Island”: Liebeneiner succeeds in creating suspense in the sense of Hitchcock

The four parts “The Old Buccaneer”, “The Ship’s Cook”, “The Blockhouse” and “The Decision” are like a piece! Love one succeeds in creating suspense in the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock even without quick cuts. Especially the slow exploration of the island, where every thoughtless step can conjure up a new danger, is atmospherically unparalleled. The action scenes are also skilfully staged. The fight for the log cabin, for example, is all about hitting and stabbing, kicking and shooting, without the wire-fu interludes, which are now mandatory even in period films.

Some of the filming was just as dangerous as the end result, which – although shot in color – flickered across the screen in black and white when it was first broadcast: Michael Ande fell into his knife so unhappily during the chase on the ship that he only got a Emergency surgery could save her life. The accident was not cut out because Ande, who was supposed to act as the assistant to Siegfried Lowitz or Rolf Schimpf in the crime series “Der Alte” from 1977 to 2016, continued to play the scene to the end in a state of shock. In order to complete the last sequence of this chase with Israel Hands (Jacques Godin, German dubbing voice: Klaus Höhne), it had to be doubled. This can be clearly seen when Jim Hawkins wants to repel Israel’s attack in the ship rigging. In itself, the former child star (“Marianne, my childhood love”, 1955; “The Trapp Family”, 1956) was already too old for Jim at the age of 22. Since he looked younger, the audience bought the role from him.

The reward for the hardships they suffered were dream ratings at the turn of the year 1966/67, excellent reviews and the Perla television award for the soundtrack at the film and television fair in Milan. The score by the Czech composers Jan Hanuš and Luboš Sluka was recorded by the Praha Film Orchestra (FISYO) with around 45 people with the participation of a mixed choir by Pavel Kühn. However, the singers were not able to speak German and had to read the extensive text of the pirate song “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! ”Learn phonetically. That is why they had great problems with pronunciation. The prelude “Fifteen Men” sounds more like “Seventeen Men”.

The lyrics are a poem by Stevenson. It alludes to the small, treeless rock island of Dead Chest Island, which is located southeast of the Caribbean island of Tortola. However, it does not mean Treasure Island, because it is teeming with lignified plants – as the inclined television viewer will see. Be that as it may: Walter Ulbrich liked the film music so much that he used excerpts from it for the follow-up productions “Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns Adventure” (1968) and “Die Lederstrumpferzählungen” (1969).

ZDF four-part series “Treasure Island” is “a masterpiece of upscale television entertainment”

Actor Ekkehardt Belle, who impressively embodied the main character in the 1978 Stevenson adaptation “The Adventures of David Balfour” (Walter Ulbrich composed the novels “Kidnapped” and “Catriona”), describes the 1966 ZDF version of “ Treasure Island “rightly called” a masterpiece of upscale television entertainment “. In contrast, all the other 30 or so films fade away. The worst was Hansjörg Thurn’s ProSieben / ORF two-parter from 2007.

In the full-bodied trash film, announced as an “event movie”, the illustrious cast around Tobias Morretti as Long John Silver rarely engages in stupid dialogue duels that, of course, do not come from Stevenson’s pen. And to top it all off, Jim Hawkins (François Goeske) falls in love with Captain Flint’s daughter Sheila (Diane Willems), who by no means appears in the novel … Schmonzette instead of Treasure Island – there was such nonsense with Walter Ulbrich, Wolfgang Liebeneiner, Ivor Dean, Fortunately not Michael Ende and Co.!

Ivor Dean never let go of the stuff television dreams are made of. After the international triumph of the four-part series, he had the idea of making a sequel and developed a script with the English producer Robert S. Baker. However, his death in 1974 put the project on hold for the time being. Under the title “Return to Treasure Island” (“The Return to Treasure Island”) was then posthumously an original ten-part series with Brian Blessed as Long John Silver and Christopher Guard as the adult Jim Hawkins in 1986 based on his script. We only ran it once in 1987 on West German TV advertising (WWF). A re-broadcast is long overdue. (Marc Hairapetian)

Our author Marc Hairapetian wrote the chapter “In search of lost time” about the radio play adaptations of the four-part adventure on ZDF in the second edition of the photo book “Seewolf and Co.” (Oliver Kellner / Ulf Marek, Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2005, Euro 29.80).