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The Sons of Great Bear: Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Eureka Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (30th July 2025). |
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The Film
 With gold discovered in the Black Hills and a railroad carving its way across the country, there are only a handful of tribes who still resist the U.S. government's attempts to round them up into reservations. His father Matotaupa (The Thing in the Castle's Adolf Peter Hoffmann) having given himself over to the gamblng and "firewater" through the influence of "white brother" civilian scout for the U.S. Army Fred "Red Fox" Clark (Ikarie XB 1's Jirí Vrstála), Tokei-Ihto (Signals: A Space Adventure's Gojko Mitic) believes that the only way to keep their lands and their ways is to join Sitting Bull and Tashunka-Witka (Trail of the Falcon's Sepp Klose) who are making their way form up north with their armies. When Matotaupa refuses to give up the location of his tribe's cave of gold guarded by the great Mother Bear, Fred murders him and Tokei-Ihto assumes the leadership of his people from medicine man Hawandschita (Castle and Cottages' Hans Finohr) who insists that Tokei-Ihto at least hear the peace proposal of Major Smith (The Rabbit is Me's Hans Hardt-Hardtloff) – whose daughter Kate (Pulapka's Karin Beewen) Tokei-Ihto escorted to safety after their raid on the army caravan – brought to them by Fred with the backing of Dakota spy Tobias (Tecumseh's Rolf Römer). When Major Smith mysteriously falls ill, ruthless and ambitious Lieutenant Roach (Heroin's Gerhard Rachold) negotiates the lopsided terms and then arrests Tokei-Ihto when he tears up the agreement. With Tokei-Ihto incapacitated, Roach and Fred force the Oglala Lakota including Tokei-Ihto's sister Sitopanaki (Slobodanka Markovic) to barren land. Roach takes over as mayor when Smith dies – possibly poisoned by Roach who has been administering his medicine – and when he receives a release order for Tokei-Ihto who must sign an agreement to live on the reservation, Roach orders Fred to kill while escorting him, but Fred is hoping that he can convince Tokei-Ihto to split his tribe's gold with him whereupon he will not need Roach or his own gang. When Tokei-Ihto escapes in order to lead his people off the reservation and up to Missouri and a new way of life, Hawandschita sends him up the mountain to face the judgment of the Great Mother Bear; meanwhile, Fred has secured a price on his head and rallies a rabid gang of failed and starving gold prospectors. The Sons of Great Bear was the first of a long series of East German "Indianerfilm" made by DEFA and starring Yugoslavian-born East German box office favorite Mitic focusing on the Native American peoples in response to the colonial and capitalist Hollywood westerns and those of CCC in West Germany based on the works of Karl May. Scripted by anthropologist and historian Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich who became a champion of Native American causes, the good and bad divide is not so clear cut, with two Native American characters among Fred's men who remain unrepentant as the tide turns – Tobias, on the other hand, has sword an oath to Smith but repeatedly witnesses how much such agreements mean to Roach and Fred – while civilian Adams (The Adventures of Werner Holt's Horst Jonischkan) tries to intervene but ultimately must advise Tokei-Ihto that his way of life is going away before pulling up stakes with Kate after her father's death and the pair's shaky positions at the fort. Barman Ben (Chingachgook's Helmut Schreiber) is a cripple and psychological wreck after Tokei-Ihto blows up his bar where his father was murdered (the memory of which "haunts" the building), and once-proud barmaid Jenny (Story of a Young Couple's Brigitte Krause) can no longer pretend that she is anything but a whore as she becomes a clingy, unappealing hanger-on to both Roach and Fred. Director Josef Mach () largely eschews special camera angles and music accents, depicting the villainy of his characters through their words and mannerisms while the Native American characters are depicted cinematographically in a more reverent manner during ritual scenes but more often than not, their psychological states are depicted via their understated facial reactions when positioned against the backdrop of their thriving villages or the desolate landscape of their reservation. There is a certain escapist element in the way that Tokei-Ihto is able to decimate an entire gang of bounty hunters with a rifle and six-shooter but no more so than the equivalent of a white hero in a more "Western" western, and the message is more optimistic than the reality. Mitic would play several different Native American protagonists but he was likened to the West German equivalent of French actor Pierre Brice who became synonymous in that country with the May character Winnetou in the CCC films (in which Mitic appeared in uncredited early roles since they also used Yugoslavia for the more unfamiliar terrain) alongside Lex Barker's Old Shatterhand and in his own solo efforts, and would take over the Winnetou role in handful of TV movies from the nineties onward. An actor and journalist, Mach's career as a director took off after the war in his native Czechoslovakia at Barrandov Studios in a variety of genres before being invited to East Germany to direct The Sons of Great Bear that proved a box office success. 
Video
Shot before DEFA would start pushing 70mm and multichannel sound, The Sons of Great Bear was shot in 35mm anamorphic Totalvision and looks rather rough here during the Yugoslavian location work compared to the studio interiors. Although a 2K restoration of the original camera negative, it is rather uneven looking. Close-ups fare the best in terms of detail while the landscape shots look softer and some darker scenes can be a bit murky. A brief passage at thirty-six minutes looks particularly degraded, either a lab issue or a patch up job from a faded element (although a transitional scene, it consists of straight cuts and no opticals). The U.K. release is subject to cuts to compulsory cuts to remove scenes of unsimulated animal cruelty – horse tripping, in this case – which takes the form of black frames inserted at a few points to keep the soundtrack in sync, but it is the only English-friendly edition and 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.34:1 widescreen while the German editions are 1080i without English translation. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a German LPCM 2.0 mono track which fares better than the visual element starting with the drum-heavy score. All dialogue is post-dubbed as per the fashion not only of East German films of the time but also international co-productions (the film is a completely East German production but it was shot primarily on location in Yugoslavia with its lead and several supporting actors and extras from that country). Atmosphere is rather sparse while gunshots and galloping sound effects are not particularly dynamic (one wonders how the film would have sounded had it been made during East Germany's later 70mm, multi-track stereo push). Optional English subtitles are free of any noticeable errors. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by Western scholar Jenny Barrett who discusses the source novels of Welskopf-Henrich – who had spent time with the Oglala Lakota in the United States and whose work was regarded as more faithful than that of Karl May – and the film's political and social aspects in contrast to the American and Italian westerns, and the motivation of East Germany to do their own series after learning that their citizens went to various Eastern Bloc countries to see the West German westerns banned in their own country. Barrett also discusses both Germany's fascination with Native Americans including the founding of Indian clubs by hobbyists and the notion that they felt an affinity with other outcasts of capitalist empires. In discussing the source novels, Barrett also reveals that characters who have little presence in the film other than the visual are explored with more depth including Tokei-Ihto's sister and his parents (the latter have one scene in the film and it may be easy for the less attentive viewer to not deduce their relationship to the progatonist).  "World Wide West" (16:32) is an interview with Austin Fisher, author of "Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western" who also discusses the German "Indianthusiasm" and the reasons that the East German government found Karl May "ideologically suspect" but also argues that The Sons of Great Bear does not "reject" American, Italian, and West German westerns but engages in a dialogue with them. Fisher also distinguishes the Leftish Spaghetti Westerns from the East German Socialist Westerns in that the former used the Mexican Revolution as a Cold War allegroy while East Germany used Indians – noting here like the other commentators that he is using the term in historical terms – and that they targeted different audiences in critiquing capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism: the Italians targeting students, protesters, strikers, and outsider movements while the East Germans were targeting their entire audience in suggesting an affinity between their people with the Native American characters. "Homelands" (26:48) is a video essay by Lee Broughton, author of "The Euro-Western" who looks at both the distinctions between East and West German westerns and what they shared in contrast to American westerns, and goes back further than Karl May to explore Germany's Indianthusiasm however reverential while also acknowledging the problematic cultural appropriation of Indian clubs that continues to this day with live, televised performances of Karl May adaptations. The disc also includes "Eyewitness Report" (10:29), a 1965 newsreel on the making of the film that has also been censored of horse tripping shots for this release, as well as the German theatrical trailer (3:10) and a newly-created Masters of Cinema trailer (1:46) for the film. 
Packaging
The disc comes in a limited edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Colin Murdoch and a collector's booklet featuring new writing on "The Sons of Great Bear" and DEFA’s approach to the Western by Mariana Ivanova, Academic Director of the DEFA Film Library who also contributed an essay to Eureka's Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA box set of East German Socialist science fiction films.
Overall
East Germany's Socialist Realist response to the Hollywood and West German westerns starting with The Sons of Great Bear provided a different perspective on familiar stories of American expansion by Europeans who also felt marginalized by capitalism infringing both physically and culturally on their own borders.
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