MARCO FERRARI -Touche Pas a la Femme Blanche!

 Released January 1974

Marco Ferrari

It's a western! A continental western from the mid 70's when the western was winding down. Terence Hill and Bud Spencer wern't in it, though it did have a lot of stars. But none of them had ever made westerns before and they'd never make any others again. Same goes for the director. It wasn't shot in Almeria either, it was shot in Paris. In fact it's set in Paris. On a building site.

The Italian director Marco Ferrari was a maverick, somewhat avant-garde figure, very much in the shadow of his many more illustrious compatriots. Something of a Dadaist, he had more in common with Alfred Jarry than he did Roberto Rossellini and by the early 1970's his career was flat-lining with each obscure-by-intent, release. In his contemporaneous films of the period he'd cast his favourite actor, Ugo Tognazzi in "L'Udieze", as a pimp working for the Vatican, and in "Dillinger e Morte" it's Michel Piccoli as an ennui-filled bourgeois who absent-mindedly murders his wife. In "La Cagne", Marcello Mastrioianni stars as a Messerschmitt obsessed Robinson Crusoe who finds himself besieged by a woman who wants to be his dog. Pretty odd films.

Michel Piccoli, snacking 

Inspired by a sumptuous banquet that precipitated life-saving diabetes treatment, Ferrari gathered his actors together for le film de scandale of 1973, "La Grande Bouffe". With the addition of Phillipe Noiret, they portrayed a group of respectable men of society, who inspired by somewhat elusive motives, affect their own demise through excessive over consumption. Along the way they indulge themselves with a group of prostitutes and overcome dangerous bouts of flatulence. The film chimed with the post-May 68 political climate which saw many established directors paying homage to the radical agenda set by Jean-Luc Godard and the younger generation of cineastes he'd inspired. At one end of the scale Pasolini's "Teorema" (1968) made it's radical commentary within a minimalist context, whilst Fellini's papal fashion-show in "Roma" (1972) took things towards giddy excess. However nobody could begrudge Ferrari's effort as being crowned the intemperate "Citizen Kane" of this whole period; a film that would inspire adulation and revulsion in equal measure.

High on this reception, Ferrari immediately re-assembled his cast and plunged straight into his next
project. This time round his incarnate love of absurdity and improvisation would hit un-paralleled heights. 

The film was shot in the summer of 1973 in the vast crater burrowed out from the demolished Les Halles food
market. For 800 years this central space had functioned as the Le Ventre des Paris or Belly of Paris, a designation immortalised in Emile Zola’s novel of the same name. But like London’s Covent Garden, Paris had long outgrown the efficiency of hosting such services in a congested central location. Under Georges Pompidou, plans were made to re-imagine the area as a central hub for the subterranean RER rail interchange, with shopping and culture sat aloft like a concrete layer of icing. That this gateau was not to the taste of the Parisians is of no great surprise and subsequent attempts to sweeten the pudding have been met so far with very little civic enthusiasm.  I like to think that Ferrari was prescient in this regard, with the setting not merely a happy accident but one imbued with a deeper sense of iconoclasm. It also preserves a la Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris, an immortal record of a city in turmoil and transfiguration. 

In this hollowed out building site, Ferrari decided to shoot of all things a satirical recreation of the Battle of the Little Big Horn…with Custer’s last stand…Indians et al. He juxtaposed the semi-straight depiction of the story by actors in authentic period costumes, against the jarringly modern setting. Scenes are clearly shot whilst the demolition is in progress. At one point an Indian massacre is conducted in the fire lit to topple on old market chimney and cannons are fired bringing down the iron-work of a large covered hall. Soldiers idle in street cafes awaiting orders and executions are held in the site’s moulded plastic viewing platform. At one point Sitting Bull leads an expedition to a boutique to purchase guns. In another an exhibition is held of embalmed Indians, their bodies stuffed with back copies of Paris-Soir. 

Wounded Knee 1973

The mood is comical but dark, with the history of the Indian genocide linked to contemporary American foreign policy. There is a whiff of Vietnam in the air and pictures of President Nixon decorate the walls with Watergate referenced. In the February of 1973, a few months before filming commenced the ghosts of the Big Horn were revisited in the Wounded Knee Occupation which resulted in a 71 day stand-off between the American Indian Movement and the FBI which resulted in three fatalities. In the film, the character Pinkerton, a Professor of Anthropology, oversees events dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. As the 7th Cavalry descend on the Oglala Sioux, his shirt is emblazoned with the letters CIA and he exits the stage en-route to Chile. It’s that sort of film. 

Perhaps the closest comparison to this film is the surreal end scene of the contemporaneous “Blazing Saddles” when the mass bar room fight collapses into the Busby Berkeley sound stage, though the farce here never quite transcends the polemics.

The cast however look like they’re enjoying the shoot and with the director inserting himself into the assembly we are forgiven for thinking the whole thing was shot in between courses for another of Ferrari’s gastronomic feasts. In addition to Mastroianni as Custer, Noiret as General Terry and Piccoli as Buffalo Bill the film is a-wash with European acting talent. Alain Cuny plays a stone-faced Sitting Bull, Serge Reggiani with shaved head japes as a king's fool and Catherine Deneuve is Custer’s romantic foil. The film's title "Touche Pas a la Femme Blanche!" (Don't touch the white woman!) is a phrase addressed repeatedly throughout the film to Ugo Tognazzi's character Mitch, the Indian scout who plays a pivotal role to the film's chief protagonists. His character carries the greatest satirical depth and pathos. Ridiculed by his Army paymasters, abused by the Govt. civilians and despised by his Indian brethren, his painfully duplicitous role is revealed as a blessing compared to his miserable existence in a subterranean sweat shop.

So its a film about colonial exploitation, racism, economic subjugation and the folly of valour...amongst heavy-duty earth-moving machines. It’s a curio and one worth seeing. At least once, anyway, if only to remind ourselves that wise lessons about civil insurrection used to be a subject of inspiration to the producers of mainstream entertainment. 

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