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.

53. LITTLE BIG MAN (western, 1970) From his Hospital bedside 121-year old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) recounts his exploits to a reporter: Captured by Cheyenne Indians at the age of 10 he's integrated into their 'alien' society and made the son of Indian 'Old Lodge Skies' (Chief Dan George). Proving his courage despite his short stature he's given the name of 'Little Big Man'. During the Indian Wars Jack is returned to white society. There he works as a shopkeeper, gunfighter, and finally used as an Indian Scout. The latter landing him under the command of General Custer (Richard Mulligan), who's putting together an army to fight the Indians at Little Big Horn.

Critique: Extremely enjoyable, epic western directed by Arthur Penn. Praised for its depiction of Native Americans, it has biting satirical (and political) touches, saddled with farcical historical accounts of the Indian Wars. The once controversial aspects were meant to represent the ideologies of the time, but it has not lost any of its grit.

What I like the most is its unique interpretation of Indians. Never in the long cycles of American westerns were Indians presented as almost alien, coming across as a mythical people whose ignorance of political maneuvers and technology proved their downfall. A very bitter and sad farewell swansong to what war and genocide has taken away.

Atypical cast delivers strong passages but you won't forget the 2-standout roles of General Custer as portrayed by the maniacal Richard Mulligan and 'Old Lodge Skies' played by the philosophical Chief Dan George.

QUOTES: Old Lodge Skies: "There is an endless supply of white men. But there has always been a limited number of 'human beings'. We won today, we won't win tomorrow."

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. ****

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.

Little Big Man (1970)

Well, this was destined to be a headliner--Arthur Penn directing (after "Bonnie and Clyde") and Dustin Hoffman (after "The Graduate" and "Midnight Cowboy"). And it's a comedy in the wackiest way. Hoffman is a survivor from Little Big Horn (Custer's Last Stand) and this is an invented life up to that point, told from memory to man with a tape recorder at the age of 123.

And the old (old!) Hoffman is pretty terrific, mostly in the narration, but including some pretty caked on make-up, too. Most of the movie is a young Hoffman as both Indian and White Man (alternating, depending on how he gets miraculously saved from one disaster after another). It's a farce, yes, but there are overtones of tragedy throughout (the annihilation of a race can only be so funny for so long) and there are some truly violent scenes, mostly of Indians being slaughtered by the Army.

It might help to know this is a metaphor of sorts about the brutality of the Army in Vietnam, which was raging at the time. It does make it all less frivolous. But it's also just fine as a crazy retelling of the last great famous Indian War, and the events (more or less) leading up to it. Hoffman is terrific in his usual way, and the support around him funny, especially the old Indian Chief, played by Chief Dan George. The two other big stars appear only briefly, Faye Dunaway in a couple scenes, and Martin Balsam in one. It's really Hoffman's film, and Penn's, too, with a grand and complex range of scenes inside and out, night and day, city and wide open country.

It didn't strike me as a brilliant film, or even as funny as it could have been, but it's endlessly engaging and there are some witty and funny moments sprinkled all through. It is long, and I might not call it slow even though it feels like it drags here and there, for sure.