Osceola

"Osceola" takes us to Florida 1835 when the white farmers want complete control of the land, so sending the Seminole Indians to a reservation far away is planned - which leads to warfare. Chief Osceola (Gojko Mitic) unintentionally reminds me of Tarzan a lot: his main job is to rescue anybody in trouble, for example from a crocodile when crossing the river. The political tasks are mostly for Moore (Iurie Darie), a farmer who looks into the future when machines will be used instead of slave labor. His rich rival Raynes (Horst Schulze) is presented as a merciless racist capitalist who treats the black slaves badly and the Indians worse, whereas Moore even married an Indian girl - an obvious chunk of ideology you have to expect in a production from behind the iron curtain. This movie was shot in Cuba by an East German team (who had few other communist countries with palm trees to choose from, I guess). Director Petzold had also directed Mitic' two previous westerns "Tödlicher Irrtum" and "Weisse Wölfe". "Osceola" is a bit slow sometimes, too much singing and talking in between the action sequences, but it is interesting for its historical background, rather different from the usual Prairie Indians. Somebody gets a credit for "scientific advice" in the titles to point out is was well researched...