Saturday, December 2, 2023

Reds Use a Western for Propaganda [archived newspaper article.]

 

The Gazette – Cedar Rapids, Iowa

By Joseph Fleming

March 22, 1966

 

BERLIN (UPI) – The Reds have adopted the Redskins in an effort to whip up anti-American sentiment in East Germany.

     The communists haven’t asked permission of the American Indians whom they are portraying in a film names “Sons of the Golden Bear.”

     The Redskins – painted up East Germans – appear in the first Indian movie ever made by the state-run Defa Film Company.

     The film is playing topacked houses in the Soviet zone, not because it is anti-American but because it has action, a quality seldom seen in East German propaganda films.

     On a wide screen there are blue skies, broad prairies, tomahawks, bows and arrows.

Black and White

     The film is photographed in color, but the story is told only in terms of black and white.

     The action pits courageous, peace-living, clean-living Dakota Indians against blood-thirsty savages – American soldiers and settlers who are depicted as cold-blooded murderers.

     The Americans, by use of superior arms and deceit, force a group of Dakota Indians from their rich hunting grounds to a stone desert reservation incapable of sustaining life.

Murder

     First they murder the Indian chief. Then the only obstacle is his son, Tokei-Ihto, played by Yugoslav Actor Gojko Mitic.

     The army invites the son into the fort to smoke the pipe of peace, but once inside he is seized and imprisoned.

     East German film critics called the film exciting but stopped short of calling it good.

     The critic of the Volksarmee, weekly newspaper of the armed forces, recommended it to servicemen for the stand it takes against “exploitation and oppression”.

 

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