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| The Treasure of the Silver Lake | |
|---|---|
 Original poster | |
| Directed by | Harald Reinl |
| Screenplay by | Harald G. Petersson |
| Based on | Treasure of the Silver Lake by Karl May |
| Produced by | Horst Wendlandt |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Ernst W. Kalinke |
| Edited by | Hermann Haller |
| Music by | Martin Böttcher |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Constantin Film (West Germany) Jadran Film (Yugoslavia) |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 111 minutes |
| Countries | West Germany Yugoslavia |
| Language | German |
| Box office | $29 million (est.) |
The Treasure of the Silver Lake (German: Der Schatz im Silbersee) is a 1962 Western film directed by Harald Reinl, loosely based on German author Karl May's 1891 novel of the same name. It was the first in a highly-successful series of films based on May's works by the West German studios Rialto and Constantin Film, starring American actor Lex Barker as the frontiersman Old Shatterhand and French actor Pierre Brice as the Apache warrior Winnetou.
Filmed on-location in Croatia (then part of Yugoslavia) as a co-production with Jadran Studios, the film was released in West Germany on 14 December 1962. It was the highest-grossing German-language film of that year, and its success demonstrated the viability of European-produced Western films, laying the groundwork for the Spaghetti Western.