Genre Films: Westerns
CHINGACHGOOK, THE GREAT SNAKE
Director: Richard Groschopp
1967, 91 min., English subtitles
1740. French colonists and Hurons fight against English troops and their allies, the Delaware. Only Chingachgook (Gojko Mitic), a young Delaware, and his fair-skinned friend Deerslayer (Rolf Römer) realize that the colonizers intend to exterminate the Native Americans altogether.
Chingachgook's fiancée Wahtawah (Andrea Drahota), the daughter of the Delawarean chief, is kidnapped by the Huron tribe. Together with his friend Deerslayer, Chingachgook sets out to free her from her captors. As they approach the Huron camp, the scalp hunters Harry Hurry (Jürgen Frohriep) and Tom Hutter (Helmut Schreiber) cross their path. Chingachgook is taken captive by the Hurons. He tries in vain to convince them that the war between the whites is not the Indians' war. It's only when the Hurons are defeated in a fierce battle with English troops that the wounded Huron chief realizes that Chingachgook was right. He declares peace with all Native American tribes.
This adaptation of The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper was filmed in Bulgaria and in the Tatra Mountains of Slovakia.
Background:
GENRE FILMS: WESTERN
Genre films - including children's films, comedies, Westerns, war films, science fiction, musicals and spy films - were an important part of East German film production. DEFA’s so-called "Red Westerns" sought to tell stories about the American West from the point of view of the Native Americans. An attempt to ideologically counteract with entertainment films from the West, the genre films drew millions of viewers into the cinemas and became box-office hits.
Film adaptations of the popular novels on the Apache chief Winnetou by Karl May had become very succesful in Western Germany in the early 1960s. The DEFA in the East sought to produce own films centrering on Native Americans and "Western" themes. Different politically influenced interpretations of "good" and "bad" in East and West domineered these films. In the East the Westerns were produced to entertain but also to educate: well-researched historically authentic stories where the Native Americans were portrayed as the good guys were to counteract West Germany's poeticized image of Winnetou, the gentle "Redskin". The exploitative US settlers and the cavalry – the American imperialists and capitalists – were the bad guys.
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