Little Big Man (1970)

Director Arthur Penn is best known for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), but he made a much better film just a few years later. As with the case with another classic film from 1970, MASH, Penn reached into the American past and re-interpreted it in an anti-war fashion. Both films managed to be comedies despite obvious influence from the liberal Vietnam protest movement, which could easily have led to preachy sentiment.

Of course Little Big Man is pro-Indian, but perhaps deservedly so. From their point of view, the Indians were certainly cornered and slaughtered. The difference between Little Big Man and Dances With Wolves (1990) is that the former does not treat the lead character with much reverence, while the latter does. Dustin Hoffman's Jack Crabb is more hapless than heroic. He rarely shifts between the white and Indian worlds of his own free will.

In that respect, Little Big Man is also similar to Forrest Gump (1994). Our lead character passes through American history more by circumstance than design. He may be more cognizant of the situation than the thick-skulled Gump, but he is powerless to protect his various wives or his adopted people.

The revisionist history is taken to extremes, generally for comic purposes. The preacher (Thayer David) is harshly and reflexively Puritan, and his wife (Faye Dunaway) is a nymphomaniac hypocrite. The snake oil salesman (Martin Balsam) would rather surrender his body parts than his trade. Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey) is so gregarious that he would toss a $20 gold piece to a drunkard that he hardly knows, and later that same day entrust him with an important mission and even more money.

The ultimate caricature is that of the legendary General Custer. Custer was for decades heroically idealized in the E.S. Paxson painting "Custer's Last Stand." To tear down that propagandistic image, Custer (Richard Mulligan) is depicted in opposite fashion as a completely conceited and politically ambitious mass murderer. Mulligan's performance is so convincing that no viewer will consider General Custer in the same way as before.

The film's sympathies are with the Cherokees, but the Indians are not made out to be perfect. They kidnap wives and children, and kill assumedly harmless whites who are simply traveling west. Jack Crabb is captured and spared only because he can identify himself as a 'Human Being'.

The Indians are clearly sexist as well, with firmly established roles. The homosexual comic relief Indian (Robert Little Star) is treated as a woman. However, a butch woman, such as Crabb's sister (Carol Androsky), will be ridiculed and not allowed to behave as a man.

Despite the success of Little Big Man with both critics and filmgoers, the movie only landed a single Academy Award nomination. Chief Dan George, the befuddled but respected elderly Indian, earned a Best Supporting Actor nod. Perhaps the lack of recognition explains the film's relative obscurity today. It is rarely shown on pay cable film channels, and has not been released on DVD. (90/100)

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