Little Big Man

My parents purchased a VHS copy of Little Big Man for me when I was 14 and, because it was a western, I didn't touch it for two years, in spite of their belief in its greatness. When I finally watched the film, I was astounded to find a film that was funny, angry, violent, and moving simultaneously. It turned out that my parents were, in fact, correct. Little Big Man was great.

I've gone back to the movie several times since that first viewing and it continues to entertain and affect; for me, a film that has emotional resonance well after the first viewing is rare and, though it does not always point to greatness, it often does.

Every element of the film is fantastic. The acting, by Hoffman and Dan George in particular, is amazing, as is Penn's direction. The story picaresque and always fascinating. There simply is no weak component to this movie.

I must also commend the film as a literary adaptation. I am not the most supportive critic of the Thomas Berger novel upon which the film is based. I find its thematics confused; it cannot decide whether or not it wants to revise western mythology or further it and, in that way, it fails for me. Calder Willingham's adaptation removes the ambivalence inherent in the novel and thereby writes one of the first and greatest revisionist Hollywood Westerns.

Little Big Man is a great movie, as I have said, and it deserves much more notoriety than it receives. This is, I fear, a film that too few people of my generation know. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it as an excellent and entertaining way to spend a couple of hours.

Dustin Hoffman with Little Big Man joined the ranks of such players as Jeanette MacDonald, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward Judd. What he had in common with them is that he played a man greatly aged with make up reminiscing about his youth which was quite a colorful one. Later on Cicely Tyson and Emilio Estevez joined this select bunch.

Poor Hoffman just can't find himself a niche in the world of the west either with white men or with Indians. He finds himself in the Dakota Territory of the 1870s and makes the acquaintance of such people as Wild Bill Hickok and George Armstrong Custer, a couple of old west legends who met famous premature deaths in the same year of 1876. And of course some lesser people in mostly low places.

Hoffman gets some great support from people like Martin Balsam as a medicine show conman whom he spends some time with and Faye Dunaway as the widow woman who takes the orphan Hoffman in and explains and demonstrates the facts of life. Jeff Corey plays Wild Bill Hickok who explains to Hoffman he really doesn't have the right stuff to be a gunfighter.

Best of all is Richard Mulligan as the controversial General George Armstrong Custer whose ambitions for military glory led to the massacre at Little Big Horn. Mulligan is ambitious and will not take good advice. Watching Little Big Man in the scenes with Mulligan it was like looking at Donald Trump campaigning for president. Just like The Donald, Mulligan will not listen to anyone other than himself. In fact you mostly have to use reverse psychology to get Mulligan to do things your way. Hoffman may be a misfit, not unlike his character in The Graduate, but he learns to play Mulligan like a piccolo.

Little Big Man is a different and entertaining look at the old west and Hoffman is superb. But the one to really watch in this is Richard Mulligan. He steals the film in whatever scene he's in.

For many years in Hollywood, Native Americans were not allowed to portray themselves in films. One director commented, they neither know how to play Indians, nor can they act. Once this absurd idea was quashed and Native Indians were allowed to portray their own people, not only was the myth crushed, but some of them received the highest tributes the film industry could honor them with. Such was the case with this unusual story which was touted as the most forgotten hero of the southwest. Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) plays a white boy who landed smack dab in the emerging historical west at the start of the colonization period. Through his own fanciful narrative, we journey along as he survives an Indian massacre, adopted into the native culture, then re-acculturated into the White world near emerging townships, and then through several high frontier adventures which culminates with, The Battle of The Little Big Horn. Chief Dan George is Old Lodge Skins a native American who made himself memorable to American Audiences plays tutor and mentor to Jack Krabb. Faye Dunaway plays Mrs. Louise Pendrake who is both step-mother and temptress to the maturing Krabb. Martin Balsam plays Mr. Merriweather who literally goes to pieces throughout the film. Jeff Corey befriends Crabb as Wild Bill Hickok. Finally there is Richard Mulligan who plays Gen. George Armstrong Custer, both as a serious military man and then as a lunatic officer. The entire film is destined for classic status, depending on history's eventual reflection of modern Native Americans. ****

Little Big Man is a fun, picaresque western with some fine visual sequences and plenty of good acting. But it's a major step down from the book, one of the finest American novels of the '60s. The difference is in the handling of the characters. The movie presents Custer, Wild Bill Hickok, Rev. Pendergast and his wife, the patent medicine seller, and the rest as comic "turns," not as full-fledged people in their own right. Maybe this is how Penn, with his theatrical background, instinctively saw the material, and it gives the movie too much of a Blazing Saddles feel. The script (or perhaps what Penn uses of it) boils much of the dialog down into one-liners (doubtless, the task of condensing such a sprawling story into a movie of less than three hours didn't help). Even Chief Dan George, as Old Lodge Skins, the best developed character here, often comes across as merely a lovable schlemiel. Much of it's funny, but it doesn't cut very deep.

The book is more human, giving each character Jack encounters three dimensions and avoiding the trap of rendering any of them either all good or all bad. The moment in Penn's film that best evoke the book is the scene where Custer catches Jack approaching to kill him and instead of killing his stalker, lets him go. Throughout this wonderful novel, characters do unexpected things that seem at first to be totally out of character, and thus serve to remind us of the complexity of human beings. As someone suggests here, the film may intend to say something about the random, unpredictable nature of the universe. The novel does something a lot more difficult and down-to-earth: It reminds us that it takes a lifetime to know even a few of our fellow humans. And especially for Jack, who has to navigate two distinct cultures.

So if you liked the movie, by all means read the book. You'll finish it loving this tall tale way more.

This is one of those movies you have to see if you like great films.This is a long movie but it is so good you'll never want it to end.I rated this movie a 10 but only cause the scale doesn't go any higher.

This is the story of Jack Crabb who begins the movie as a 121 year old man in a nursing home recounting his life.And what a life it was.He bounces back and forth in the Old west between the world of the white man and the world of the Native American.Crabb sees and does just about everything possible in both worlds.The joy and sadness and fun he has along the way makes for one helluva movie.

Dustin Hoffman is brilliant in this film.It may be his best performance ever yet it is somehow overlooked when many people think of his movies.It is a tour de force for Hoffman who plays an Indian and gunslinger and drunkard and muleskinner and many other things in this movie. Chief Dan George is nothing short of amazing in this movie.But yet one critic said he wasn't acting,he was just an Indian playing an Indian.Bah! Richard Mulligan was so perfect as General George Custer in this movie that he is who I see whenever I hear the name of Custer mentioned.Faye Dunaway and Martin Balsam create memorable characters too.

This movie makes one of the strongest statements I've ever seen about the treatment of the Native Americans yet you probably won't even realize it at the time.This is a movie that you'll replay in your head and then it hits you that there was even more there than met the eye.

The humor,tragedy and lush characters will stay with you long after you see this movie.This movie is based on the fine book by Thomas Berger and is very faithful to it.I recommend the book wholeheartedly, too.