Customer Reviews

"Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (Widescreen)"

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a quirky take on white/native relations in the late 19th/early 20th century, a mad mix of historical fact and whimsical fiction. Newman is masterful as the addled demagogue into which Buffalo Bill has morphed. I recommend this film for students enrolled in our college's AMERICAN WEST class; it is provocative fodder for good discussion, good writing on alternative views of history.

Robert Altman fans will recognize stock characters from his other films, but will be entertained (perhaps delighted) throughout.

First of all, this is a very ugly disc. So ugly that you have to watch it on an older tube TV. There are awful distortions during big movements and some scenes look very low rez. It's not the quality of the source print that I'm talking about (which is okay), it's a really bad transfer to DVD. It's not anamorphic widescreen at all, it's letterbox. It says anamorphic here in the Amazon descriptions, but I don't think it makes this claim on the box. The too-short documentary about the making of Buffalo Bill actually looks FAR BETTER than the movie itself as far as crisp detail and the absence of compression artifacts.

Spoilers follow - Buffalo Bill has a great first half-hour and then wobbles all over the place. The movie looks like it's going to be a typical Altman Audio/Visual stew of show business, fire arms, and history. The Wild Bill show looks wonderful, the cinematography is great, the dialogue seems pretty good and the casting inspires some optimism. Then the Indians show up. Sitting Bull and William Halsey are portrayed as noble, mysterious and aloof. The movie spirals into a series of events where they confound the smarmy Bill Cody over and over. The last hour of the movie requires Newman to act more and more flustered by Sitting Bull until he has a really cringeworthy breakdown in front of the ghostly Chief.

Anyway, there's stuff for hardcore Altman fans (I'm one) to watch for. Newman is initially impressive in his role and then sputters. The pageants and attention to details that Altman excels at are well done. Ultimately the themes of showbiz and history wilt before the rambling blah of the noble savage.

I love Robert Altman, and I am a tremendous fan of his movies (See McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Shortcuts, etc.). But no one hits it out of the ballpark everytime, and this effort, while having some worthwhile moments, is a dud.

I never thought an Altman movie would bore me, but this one was interminable. He makes the point about Buffalo Bill, and hence all showbiz and celebrity (and politics), being a fraud in the first 15 minutes. But this is a two hour plus movie, and the next hour and 45 minutes is a lot of improvised movement & wandering around that signifies nothing & conveys nothing new beyond that.

The good things about the picture are Paul Newman, Will Samson, the dignity of the man playing Sitting Bull,Burt Lancaster, and the wonderful recreation of the look of Buffalo Bill's show. ( My father saw his show as a child, and the excitement & wonder of it never left him). But there is a whole lot of watching Newman walking around & having muddled dialogue with this one and that one, all adding up to not much.

If you want to indulge your guilt over the sorry and dreadful treatment of Native Americans knock yourself out. Even this very real subject is handled poorly here as well, the worthwhile moments overwhelmed by too much extraneous nonsense. And, as one reviewer pointed out, the real Buffalo Bill was said to have treated the Native Americans with kindness & respect and they regarded him well.

When you are an intuitive and flexible and improvisational film-maker, as Altman is, it is inevitable that you won't bottle lightning everytime out. And Altman has had his misfires, as has Kubrick, Kurosawa, Fellini, Bergman and every other brilliant artist. This is one.

Of course, it was intended as a comment on a domestic policy. And a profoundly embarrassing one at that. Same diff. Same mind-set. One of Altman's best films. (Before the post-Player downhill slide.) Newman is wonderful. Burt Lancaster is wonderful. The European imigrants are generally buffoonish, but the Native Americans are presented as real people and not hyper-noble spiritual beings. That would have been too easy. Geraldine Chaplin is as ethereally wonderful as always - and, speaking of Chaplin, why isn't Cria Cuervos on DVD? Are the people who run those companies THAT hopeless???

'Buffalo Bill' is a satirical broadside aimed at a nation arrogant enough to think it can write its own history. Throughout, living legends with their sanitised, mendacious or egocentric versions of history, are assured that their names will resound through the ages, when, less than a century later, an angry film-maker is exposing these people and their history as so much noisy, gaudy spectacle drowning out truth and murder.

Made in America's murkiest decade, the film looks at a country repeatedly deluding itself and unable to handle it when this delusion is exposed. It does for the Western and American history what 'Oh What a lovely war' did for English history, turning it into a circus, where sacred 'truths' are revealed to be at best distorted stories, and at worse criminal fabrications. it equates that history with showbusiness (this is an arena in which historical players become showbiz stars; the funniest sequence involves a special 'Wild West' show for President Cleveland, with taciturn Sitting Bull feigning an assassination), with politics.

'Bill' isn't as subtle or affecting as Altman's great Western, 'McCabe and Mrs Miller' - the playing with reality and appearance, between the flawed protagonist and his majestic image, is sometimes heavy-handed, though as often poignant (Paul Newman is brilliant, revealing both Cody's voracious ego and its related insecurity). As with the earlier masterpiece, Altman is not content to merely demolish myth - he creates a rich, fraught realism which simply by existing quashes the myth - the cacophany of conflicting voices, dialects and sounds (where the smallest supporting bit player is ennnobled by the vignette-structured comedy); the comic obsession with period detail, including some wonderfully ridiculous hair; the faithfulness to the era's mindset, its modes of cultural (especially visual) expression, while retaining a critical late-20th century perspective, allowing the film to be at once mercilessly cynical and yet somehow affectionate to its monstrous protagonists and their faith in the showbiz which, after all, is royally entertaining us.

Typically, this 'realism' is one more level Altman undermines - the whole story is an alcoholic loser's biased anecdote, while Sitting Bull's dream power more than once engulfs Bill's identity and his narrative. A flawed, but very funny film.

"Buffalo Bill and the Indians" was a riveting movie. Bored? Hardly. Joel Gray came close to stealing this picture, as he has many times, as Bill's business partner. While the historical Cody wasn't anywhere near the charlatan Paul Newman and Altman have made him, his portrayal reminds us all not to believe our own press.

Cody and many of the other men of that era -- James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok springs to mind -- had lived eventful lives, lives that fascinated Easterners, reading the Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls or seeing one of the Wild West Shows or plays about the west. Cody and Hickok were prone to give the people what they wanted, playing their characters pretty near to the hilt. They had a sense that their time was passing and the things which had made them famous, the exploits that had made their lives seem adventutous, were coming to an end. You get this sense of approaching, inevitable obsolescence in Newman's portrayal, especially as the film nears it's end.

I have waited for this film to be available in a decent version and I wasn't dsiappointed.

See the film. Make your own decisions. There are several fine performances and Newman and Altman don't quite let Joel Gray steal the picture. They allow fine performances from many actors, especially Geraldine Chaplin as Annie Oakley, to shine through.

Jamie Fraser-Paige

well, all I can tell you is having grown up in western oklahoma with lots of real indians this is the best movie about INDIANS i have ever seen. Not only do real Indians play Indians (as opposed to Italians playing Indians) but they actually sound and feel like real Indians. I saw this movie over twenty years ago and it has haunted me ever since. Although I really don't think Buffalo Bill was as big a fraud as he is portrayed here (in fact the Indians in his Wild West show LIKED him and remarked on his generosity and compassion) I think of him (in this movie) as a symbol of how we (whites) view ourselves and of our tendency towards superficiality and phoniness.

But above all, I think this movie made a powerful statement about Native American spirituality that rings true. Sitting Bull WAS a profoundly spiritual person. He WAS mistreated and murdered by greedy and shallow people who couldn't appreciate his profound depth.

To me, this was a movie about Sitting Bull and the greatness of Native American spirituality and I hope it haunts you the way it has me.

I can't believe it's not more well known.

Robert Altman's "Buffalo Bill and the Indians (or Sitting Bull's History Lession)" has largely been forgotten while his other films from this period have been rediscovered as classics. While maybe its time for this one too.

The "Why" of why this film such a critical bomb is not hard to decipher, Altman is continuing his critique of the West that started with "McCabe and Mrs. Miller". Yet this film is even more scathing. Bufflo Bill is an illiterate buffoon and President Cleveland works as a reminder that there were politicians back then. What I think really worked against Altman here, wasn't his treatment of this historical period but the changing of his own. In 1976, audiences were getting tired of these self-conscious films that were popular just five years eariler. "Buffalo Bill" stuck between "Jaws" (in '75) and then "Star Wars" (in '77) was a hard sell as the country was getting more conservative.

Beside this, "Buffalo Bill" like a lot Altman films is a great film. He continues his pioneering use of overlapping dialogue and widescreen cinematography. And oh, did I mention it was funny, a second viewing really helps catch all of Altman's wry wit. Newman fooling around with ballet dancers is hilarious. And you can't tell me that the extra "Or Sitting Bull's History Lession" isn't a homage to Kubrick.

While not approaching the level of "Nashville" or "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," this film employs all of the Altman tricks (overlapping dialogue, a cast of thousands) to bring forth a scathing attack on America's reliance on myth and the need to rewrite the past with lies and hypocrisy. At every turn, Altman gives us images of a culture so immersed in show business and deception that it is no longer able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. While that in itself is hardly an original concept (especially for Altman, one of our greatest satirists), it works here because the film was released in 1976, the very year America was congratulating itself for a job well done. The best image remains the last, a reinforcement of America's need to dominate and win at all cost, even though such victories might be tainted by cheap shots and blatant unfairness.