Berühre nicht die weiße Frau

Marco Ferreri's "Touche pas a la femme blanche" - "Don't Touch the White Woman" in English - could easily be an extension of "Little Big Man" or a movie version of "A People's History of the United States", although it came out a few years before Howard Zinn published his famous book. It portrays the US government's crusade to exterminate the Indians, reenacted in 1970s Paris (complete with references to Pres. Nixon, and even Watergate). Marcello Mastroianni makes a chilling Gen. Custer, but Michel Piccoli is quite funny as Buffalo Bill: he sounded as though he was trying to put on an American accent while speaking French!

I read about how Marco Ferreri played a major role in the changing Italian cinema of the '60s and '70s. Certainly this film shows that. Specifically, as the United States had been taking a different look at its own history - our own glasnost and perestroika, you might say - Europe was also challenging the American cultural myth (no surprise there). I definitely recommend the movie. Also starring Catherine Deneuve and Ugo Tognazzi.

General George Custer can't wait to crush the Indians in Marco Ferreri's Touche Pas à la femme blanche. It's the only thing he can talk about. Meanwhile, he also falls in love with Marie-Hélène, who can't be touched by an Indian, especially Custer's informant. The informant awaits his moment.

Just another ordinary version of the battle between settlers and Indians at Little Big Horn? Far from it! The ever wayward filmmaker Marco Ferreri chose to film the battle of Little Big Horn at the place where Les Halles - the Parisian vegetable market - was taken down in 1974. In fact, it was actually taken down during the filming of this movie. The demolishers were probably rubbing their eyes in astonishment. Catherine Deneuve, right here, in this mess?

I enjoyed the movie immensely. All the actors wear the same deadpan expressions as if they really are blind to the fact that they are acting out a traditional western story in a modern setting. Unlike in Les Visiteurs, no jokes about the confrontation with modernity. The characters just do not seem to see it, as if they live in another dimension. It creates many brilliant moments, such as when a cannon is fired and a building collapses. Or if Custer points to a Coca-Cola advertisement and says: "My wife."

Don't Touch the White Woman is a very strange and surreal film for the average person...it basically tells the story of General George Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn. It tells it as a semi-costume period piece in the midst of modern Paris, though...centered on a large construction site.

Mastrianni is wonderful as Custer, and Deneuve is great as always, but I think Ugo Tognazzi steals the show as the Indian scout...this is such a shocking role for all those who only know the actor through La Cage Aux Folles.

Leave it to Marco Ferreri to place Custer's defeat in the hands of over the top Marcello Mastroianni, Philippe Noiret, Catherine Deneuve and many other great actors. Staged in Paris where the building-pit of what is now shopping-mall Les Halles represents the prairie all forms of humour are on display, ending in black. Humour that is. A film not be missed by comediens and their followers.

Leave it to Marco Ferreri to decide to make this film in the pit that was created out of what had been Les Halles food market in the center of Paris. This was the site where the Pompidou Center was erected and now stands proudly, as though it was always had been there for all these years.

The director deals with a page of shame of American history as George Custer prepared, and later battled, the Indians in the battle of Little Big Horn that was his last stand as a military man. Where Marco Ferreri succeeds is in mixing the plot of the film with every day life of Paris in which most people didn't even bat an eye watching the invading Americans.

Mr. Ferreri was lucky in getting some familiar faces to play in his film. Thus, Marcello Mastroianni is seen as General Custer. Catherine Deneuve played the object of the general's affections. Ugo Tognazzi is great as Mitch. Michel Piccoli is bigger than life in his take of Buffalo Bill. Philippe Noiret, another excellent actor, plays Gen. Terry, and Serge Reggiani is seen as the mad Indian who runs in and out of most scenes wearing a loin cloth to cover a little bit of his nakedness.

The idea of staging this film in a construction site works well with the action in the movie thanks to a revolutionary idea by Marco Ferreri.