Customer Reviews

Little Big Man [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wonderful,funny,sad though fictoinal. Chief Dan George is the best part. His insight is very thought provoking and practical. He is a wonderful actor.Cheyanne personalties could use more explanation for the avevage viewer so as not to misinterpret their role in Real Native American culture. But Hey, It's a movie!! Custer is SCUM!!Laff at him.

At once the goofiest and angriest of all revisionist Westerns, Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) seems today less notable for its formal qualities than for its (counter)cultural content. This outraged reconfiguration of an all-American genre may be set in the Wild West, but it's also very much a bulletin of its time. Released midway through Nixon's first term and in the heat of the Vietnam War, the film is reflective of the darkening mood--both the nation's and the movies'.Penn's oater didn't just dispel the cloudless America of Westerns past--it dismembered the genre, threw the parts in a trench, and spit on the tombstone. Little Big Man was by no means the first of its kind, but it seems from this vantage to be the most vitriolic of the wild bunch of Westerns that came out during the period. Unlike Sam Peckinpah's epitaphs to the genre, there is no hint of reverence in Penn's version of the West. How could there be when genocide is revealed to be the national project?The movie exposes the lies of U.S. history via a tall tale. Unrecognizable under Terry Miles' masterful makeup, Dustin Hoffman plays 121-year-old Jack Crabb, the only white survivor of Custer's Last Stand. Bookended by scenes of Crabb in the present day recounting his life story to a historian, the narrative is a far-fetched picaresque that offers nothing less than a survey of the American conquest of the West.

At once the goofiest and angriest of all revisionist Westerns, Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) seems today less notable for its formal qualities than for its (counter)cultural content. This outraged reconfiguration of an all-American genre may be set in the Wild West, but it's also very much a bulletin of its time. Released midway through Nixon's first term and in the heat of the Vietnam War, the film is reflective of the darkening mood--both the nation's and the movies.

The movie exposes the lies of U.S. history via a tall tale. Unrecognizable under Terry Miles' masterful makeup, Dustin Hoffman plays 121-year-old Jack Crabb, the only white survivor of Custer's Last Stand. Bookended by scenes of Crabb in the present day recounting his life story to a historian, the narrative is a far-fetched picaresque that offers nothing less than a survey of the American conquest of the West.

Penn takes us back with a beautiful pan of a grassy expanse... that ends on the smoky remains of a plundered caravan. Little Jack and his sister, Caroline (Carol Androsky), cower under a wagon's canopy, their parents murdered, but are soon found by a wandering Cheyenne. The two are taken back to camp, which eventually becomes home to the orphaned Jack. (His sister, ever in fear of being raped by the savages, skedaddles unscathed.Penn's oater didn't just dispel the cloudless America of Westerns past--it dismembered the genre, threw the parts in a trench, and spit on the tombstone. Little Big Man was by no means the first of its kind, but it seems from this vantage to be the most vitriolic of the wild bunch of Westerns that came out during the period. Unlike Sam Peckinpah's epitaphs to the genre, there is no hint of reverence in Penn's version of the West. How could there be when genocide is revealed to be the national project?

Dubbed Little Big Man because of his slight stature, Crabb grows up learning the ways of the "Human Beings," as the Cheyenne call themselves. The source of a few aphoristic riffs, the "Human Being" theme immediately pegs the movie as a product of its time. It's a monicker that subverts the story of the white man's civilizing influence, even as it reduces the white race to something other than, if not beneath, human--a worldview that comes right out of the period's radical ideologies.

I've read the book, so I'm definitly biased, but I'd like to think that even if I hadn't read the book I wouldn't like this movie. It gets two stars for Dustin Hoffman and his Indian wife, who was really hot.