Little Big Man

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.

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.

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.

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.

This was one of the first neo- or revisionist-westerns and it really is a bit of a shame younger audiences mostly don't seem to know it: this is classic seventies gold. Arthur Penn, one of the driving forces behind the so called New-Hollywood (he also directed 'Bonnie and Clyde'), delivered a masterpiece - with a fantastic Dustin Hoffman.

It's an epic, tragic tale - but one told with an often very funny voice. Part satire, part honest look at America's dark and untold history, the tone and narrative structure of this film were ground-breaking. And it still looks fresh: the script, the acting, the camera, the music: everything still oozes quality more than 40 years later. A timeless classic. 9 stars out of 10.

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