Apache (film)

1846, Northern Mexico. In the border area of New Mexico , on lands that historically belonged to the Apache tribes, discovered deposits of copper and silver. Begins targeted destruction of the indigenous people. The Mexican government is ready to pay for every scalp of an Indian, and for this purpose hires a squad of scalping hunters under the leadership of adventurer Johnson. Insidious pale-faced people promise to pay off for a safe passage through the territory of the tribes with generous food supplies, but using the weakness of the red-skinned warriors, they solder them and destroy them in dozens. The courageous leader Ultsan (Mitic) and the wise Nana (Rautu) avenge the death of their fellow tribesmen.

• Gojko Mitic - Ultsana
• Milan Beli - Johnson
• Colea Rautu - Nana
• Leon Nemchik - Ramon
• Gerry Wolf - Shopkeeper
• Hoppe Rolf - Captain Burton
• Horst Cuba - Gold Digger

• Romil Sobolev, columnist for the Sputnik-Ciner magazine: “Born in American cinema, a western either talked about the adventures of cowboys, or showed the struggle of white settlers with Indians. In the latter case, the whites invariably appeared as knights and heroes, and the Indians - as treacherous murderers, mercilessly hunting whites without parsing of age or sex. <...> Historians, sociologists and artists of Europe could not but take upon themselves the main task of debunking Hollywood myths. A series of films Coldditz just helps to solve this problem - the debunking of Hollywood mythology. And the feature of these films is that they use a purely American form of western - a film of a sharp adventure story, intense action, rapid chases and combat fights, a film that categorically divides all the actors into absolutely good and unconditionally bad ” ^[3] .
• Timothy Young, Mondo Esoterica columnist : “Director Gottfried Kolditz worked wonderfully, creating a professional visual series of the film, at least not worse than Italian westerns of the same period and infinitely better than earlier westerns of DEFA studios. The film was shot near Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan - on the ground, which looks incredibly similar to the South-West of the United States. Colditz underlines this with very wide panoramas, showing the magnitude of the landscapes ” ^[4] .

• In the articles of critics, the following historical inaccuracy was noted: the American government did not pay money for human scalps ^[3] . Such transactions were made in earlier historical periods: the British and French colonization of America . In this case, the British often paid for the scalps of the French, and the French colonial authorities in Canada for similar trophies from the heads of the Iroquois , allies of Great Britain ^[5] . However, a number of other sources adhere to the opposite point of view, citing a price catalog of the California government from 1889 ^[6] .
• The film is based on an episode of the Mexican-Apache wars , the so-called John Johnson Massacre, which took place on April 23, 1837. The difference between the plot of the film and the prototype in the real story is as follows. The action of the film is postponed for 9 years before in 1846. Cut out as a result of the perfidious attack, the Apaches were by no means peaceful people, and for several years they had attacked Mexicans in northern Sonora and Chihuahua . The massacre did not occur in the city of Santa Rita del Cobre , but in the Animas Valley , 80 km south-west of the city. In order to catch the Indians off guard, it was not the distribution of flour that was organized, but a 3-day bargain with the active soldering of the Apaches.

• DEFA Film Studs
• Ulzana

• Shary Andrew. Badge W. The leader of the Redskins in the books and on the screen. - M .: New Literary Review, 2008. - p. 167-240. - 242 s. - (Idols of our childhood). - 1500 copies - ISBN 978-5-86793-562-7 .