Review of Little Big Man (1970) by Jared C — 23 Jun 2011

Have you ever seen that movie that put you in an amicable enough mood but for the life of you, you could not figure out whether or not it was a comedy? If you couldn't tell from that awkward intro that's this for me. Arthur Penn is a damn fine director who's always had an understanding of the absurd in dramatic situations but in 1970's Little Big Man he seemed to go full blown comedy...well at least one that functions as a western and actually had something to say. This film is based off a 60s comic novel about a white man raised by Indians but it's strange too me because Little Big Man was a real Sioux Warrior and by all accounts a son of a bitch who assisted in the murder of Crazy Horse. However historically the character here seems more reminiscent of Curley a Native American who fought under Custer and gave many varying depictions of this event to Historians years later. That aside and a few other inconsistencies the film for the most part goes for a historically accurate tour de force of the Old West, showing our hero witnessing many of the events Forrest Gump style. Filmed on location like Penn's other masterpiece Bonnie and Clyde this film though mostly forgotten at this point gained some recognition at the time even garnering a few Academy Award Nominations including Best Supporting Actor for Chief Dan George. But how does it hold up, if the film is so good why have most people forgotten it? Let's smoke on it, and take a look.

Our film begins with a man researching the lifestyle of a Native American tribe who called themselves the Human Beings by interviewing the last living member of the Battle of Little Big Horn 120 year old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman broke the record here for longest age span in a single performance 17-120, a whopping 103 years all of which he does with a masterful sense of goofiness and ability to entertain I haven't seen in any of his other films). To the Historians delight Jack it seems had his parents killed in a raid by this self same tribe and after his sister abandoned him was raised by the Tribe under the name Little Big Man. Little Big Man saw all of the old west including hypocritical religious extremists (Faye Dunaway in a performance both hilarious and sexy), Gun slingers like Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey who has a warmness and an archaic cowboy sensibility), and snake oil salesman before returning to Indian life with his wife Sunshine (Aimee Eccles who...is a squaw) and Grandfather Chief Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George, who should be a stoner cult icon for this performance) before the inevitable heavy handed message of the white man's brutality strikes.

I liked this movie, I didn't think it was perfect but I had a lot of fun with it. My friend and I who watched this both agreed that while he actually only said it about six times it felt like Old Lodge Skins said "I must smoke on this" or "I would very much like to smoke with him" a LOT and considering our state of mind at the time it seemed really cool and made me love Chief Dan George even more than The Outlaw Josey Wales did. But this was not without its flaws as well, the film is hell bent on showing how evil white people were to Indians to the point of historical inaccuracy and bizarre and completely out of character moments though I won't say what for fear of giving away an important plot point but it kind of bugged me and was very awkwardly done. Plus as I stated at the beginning of the review I could not for the life of me tell whether or not this film was a comedy or not. I mean Richard Mulligan as General Custer for instance was during many of the scenes funny in his swaggering unaware be-foolery but at other moments it was brutal and damn near menacing and I couldn't tell how these two things were supposed to be reconciled. But I think the major point of this that made me like this movie was the edginess of it, for 1970 this film was really pushing the boundaries of mainstream cinema with numerous references to Marijuana and a lot of surprisingly tastefully done characters who were very obviously homosexual.

So yes, this is not the masterpiece Bonnie and Clyde was, the writing was bearable but especially near the end kind of sloppy in how they tried SO hard to make everything come back. But if you're in a tolerant mood for preachiness it can be a ton of fun and one of Dustin Hoffman's finest performance and had quite a few scenes that produce some healthy chortling. As I stated this film deserves to be a stoner cult classic with the strangeness of it and awkward pacing which serves to heighten the humor. And while it's whininess about Indian cruelty and such can come off as a little misplaced and pretentious it's kind of like slavery what kind of an asshole would place THAT much fault in a film for that. Plus the settings being on location and such feel authentic and pretty damn epic in scope if not so conventional for Westerns of the time. I was once told this was the Western equivalent of Forrest Gump, and while this is certainly reminiscent of the concept of Gump to compare it too much does it discredit, it's a LOT better.