Don't Touch the White Woman!

Directed by Marco Ferreri, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rafael Azcona, Touche pas à la femme blanche ! (Don't Touch the White Woman!) is a 1974 French-Italian production and an unusually grotesque satire of the Western genre. Using the American army's war against the Native Americans as a metaphor for the Vietnam War, the film brings together historical figures such as General Custer, Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull in a world where the US president is Richard Nixon.

Although the characters wear Wild West clothing, the story unfolds in the Paris of 1973, where the vast construction pit left by the demolition of the old market halls served as the prairie. Shot with lightweight equipment and a small crew only a few weeks after Ferreri's previous film La Grande Bouffe, it reunited that film's male ensemble — Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret — with Catherine Deneuve joining them. Reversing the classic Western heroes, Ferreri sides with the Native Americans and takes aim at American militarism.