"Sometimes," says Old Lodge Skins, "the magic works; sometimes it doesn't." This time, in this movie, it works.
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"One hundred and eleven years ago, when I was ten years old, my family crossing the Great Plains was wiped out by a band of wild Indians." --Dustin Hoffman, "Little Big Man"
A penetrating historical epic.... Yes, but also a towering Western drama.... Yes, but also a very funny comedy.... Yes, but also a perceptive tragicomedy.... Yes, but also a moving testament to Man's inhumanity to Man....
Let me stop and suggest that maybe we should call it all of the above. "Little Big Man" is a collection of tall tales that ultimately entertains as it edifies, amuses as it educates, while poignantly relating the story of America's early movement West at the expense of the country's indigenous population. Believe half of what you see; believe all of what you hear.
Directed by Arthur Penn ("The Miracle Worker," "Bonnie and Clyde") from the novel by Thomas Berger and screenplay by Calder Willingham, "Little Big Man" (1970) gets better as the years go by. If anything, the film's message is more powerful today than it was over thirty years ago when it was made, as we see America's good intentions to help other people still doing as much harm as good.
The story is long, episodic, and rambling, but every segment works so it doesn't matter. Dustin Hoffman, fresh from his successes in "The Graduate" and "Midnight Cowboy" stars as Jack Crabb, a 121 year-old former frontiersman, scout, mule skinner, settler, storekeeper, gunfighter, and snake-oil salesman. He narrates the story of his younger days in the Wild West to a historian (William Hickey) keen on documenting the life and times of a real old-time Westerner. Crabb's reminiscences, mostly humorous and exaggerated, a few startlingly sincere, touch on the major subjects of Western lore, culminating in the battle of the Little Big Horn, commonly known as Custer's Last Stand. But the primary recollections dwell on the white man's treatment of the country's Native Americans, a tale that will melt your heart.
Jack Crabb begins his story at a very early age when his family is attacked and killed by a band of marauding Pawnee while the family is crossing the Plains and his own subsequent rescue by the Cheyenne (the Human Beings, as they call themselves) and adoption by their Chief, Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George). The story proceeds with Jack's return to the white community many years later and his upbringing as a teen by the Reverend Silas Pendrake (Thayer David) and his randy young wife (Faye Dunaway). Jack's religious convictions end when he discovers Mrs. Pendrake's hypocrisy and declares to the historian, "I ain't sung a hymn in 104 years."
Thereafter, Jack joins up with Mr. Allardice T. Merriweather (Martin Balsam), an eternally optimistic con man who keeps losing parts of himself--a hand, an eye, a leg--as he gets caught cheating folks. Then Jack enters his gunfighter period and meets Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey) in one of the film's most amusing episodes. Following that, he marries and becomes a storekeeper, an occupation that doesn't last long, and then returns to the Cheyenne when Pawnee kidnap his wife. Later, he becomes a mule skinner for the vainglorious General George Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan); returns to the Cheyenne, taking another wife, Sunshine (Amy Eccles); and before long doesn't know who he is or what people he belongs to. Broken treaties, white atrocities, and horror follow as the Cheyenne are pushed farther and farther off their lands. Retribution for the Native Americans and for Jack finally comes at the Little Big Horn.
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[release]10812[/release]