Não Toque na Mulher Branca

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.

Filmed in Paris, not Rome. And more a critique of American politics than Italian. They used the building site from the demolition of the traditional Les Halles district in the heart of the city as the location for their wild, wild west - including the huge pit that is now the Les Halles shopping center (and cinemas, swimming pool, parking lot, etc). Inspired! All the scenes are set in and around the building site. Custer makes his last stand, horses gallop past modern cafés, the familiar Parisian architecture rings the pit, and a Pinkerton agent Pinkerton himself) walks around in modern dress. Throw in every leading French actor of the era (some of them still around) as both cowboys and Indians and you've got the makings of a fantastic farce.

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."

I really like Marco Ferreri's films, very much, but I do not like this movie. It's uninteresting, banal, boring script. The four great actors from the masterpiece "La Grande Bouffe" (1973), Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret and Ugo Tognazzi, are also present here but, working only with no-value replicas, do not make the film worthy of interest. The presence of several other great actors such as Alain Cuny, Serge Reggiani, Paolo Villaggio, Franco Fabrizi, does not change anything for the better. However, the performance of Michel Piccoli (the only one still alive of all), which looks very commercially in the role of Buffalo Bill and succeeds a charming American accent, is worthy of admiration.

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.