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Jack se desilude com Louise e se torna um vendedor viajante. Reencontra a irmã Caroline, agora uma mulher masculinizada que despreza os homens. Ela o convence a se tornar um pístoleiro, Sody Pop Kid. Jack como Kid se torna um protegido de Wild Bill Hickok. Mas com a morte do lendário amigo, Jack desiste das armas e deixa Caroline. Jack abre um armazém e se casa com uma sueca infiel chamada Olga. O negócio não dá certo e Jack fecha o armazém. Nesse interim, Jack vê o imponente General Custer, que aconselha a todos irem para o Oeste. Jack, que andava tentando o suicídio, acha uma boa idéia.
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No caminho de volta ele reencontra seus antigos companheiros de tribo (que não o reconhecem e quase o escalpelam) e o chefe Old Lodge Skins. O chefe está cego e o lider agora é Younger Bear. Jack volta para os brancos e se junta a cavalaria do General Custer, onde acaba descobrindo que o imponente general está mais para lunático do que para herói.
Little Big Man
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Despite its
satiric and comedic approach, the film has
tragic elements and a clear social commentary about
prejudice and injustice. Little Big Man is considered an example of
anti-establishment films of the period, subtly protesting America's involvement in the
Vietnam War by portraying the
U.S. Military negatively. In the novel
Conversations with Pauline Kael, Kael says of the
Vietnam War's depiction in American films, "It doesn't look at the facts of war, of what we were doing there. And that was the attitude of a lot of American films during the war years, even Westerns that deal with an early period of American life. The Americans are racists who shoot up the Indians for the careless joy of it-Little Big Man, for instance. It was a sophisticated criticism. The Indians, for instance, would have Vietnamese faces. The key girl we saw killed in slow motion in Little Big Man was definitely an Oriental."
[1] Arthur Penn has also stated in an interview featured on a
TCM promo that elements of the film were comments on
American genocide depicting events "closest to The
Holocaust."
Story
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Jack and his older sister Caroline (
Carole Androsky) survive the massacre of their parents'
wagon train at the hands of the
Pawnee. Found by a Cheyenne warrior, Jack and his sister are taken back to a Cheyenne village. Caroline manages to escape on horseback, but Jack remains and is raised by the Cheyenne leader, Old Lodge Skins (
Chief Dan George). It proves to be an idyllic life, though Jack unwittingly makes an enemy of Younger Bear (Cal Bellini). Jack is given the name "Little Big Man" because he's short but very brave. When Jack is sixteen, he finds himself at the hands of US soldiers and quickly renounces his Native American upbringing in order to save himself. He is then put into the care of Reverend Silas Pendrake (
Thayer David) and his wife Louise (
Faye Dunaway). She is attracted to young Jack, but he cannot accept the dichotomy between Louise's pious attitude and her sexual appetite and promptly leaves her home.
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Jack decides to become the apprentice of the
snake-oil salesman Merriweather (
Martin Balsam). They are eventually tarred and feathered when their customers realize that Merriweather's products are fraudulent. One of the angry customers happens to be Jack's sister, Caroline. Once Caroline realizes that one of the men she helped to tar and feather was her brother, they reunite. She attempts to mold her brother into a
gunslinger named the Soda Pop Kid (so called because his chosen beverage is a soda pop). Jack meets
Wild Bill Hickok (
Jeff Corey) at a saloon, and Hickok takes a liking to the young man. When Hickok is forced to kill a man in self defense, Jack loses his taste for gunslinging and Caroline deserts him.
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Jack's next chosen path after he renounces gunslinging, is to open a
general store and marries a
Swedish woman named Olga (
Kelly Jean Peters). Unfortunately for Jack, his business partner turns out to be a thieving scoundrel and Jack is forced to close the store. General Custer happens to ride upon the scene and suggests the couple restart their lives out west. Jack agrees, however, during their journey out west, their
stagecoach is ambushed by the Cheyennes and Olga is abducted. Jack decides to search, in vain for Olga. During his quest, he is reunited with Old Lodge Skins, who is overjoyed Jack has returned to the tribe. Younger Bear has become a
contrary (a warrior who does everything in reverse) and, having been humiliated by Jack years before, is still clearly bitter. After a short stay with the tribe, Jack continues his search for Olga.
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He eventually becomes a "
muleskinner" within Custer's
7th Cavalry, hoping to obtain information on the location of Olga. He participates in a battle against the Cheyenne. When they begin killing women and children, he becomes enraged and turns on the U.S. Soldiers. In the nearby woods, Jack discovers the Cheyenne woman Sunshine (Aimée Eccles) in the process of giving birth. He saves Sunshine from the marauding soldiers and returns to Old Lodge Skins' tribe. Sunshine becomes his wife and they have a child together. Jack once again encounters Younger Bear, who has undergone another life change. No longer a contrary, Younger Bear is now the henpecked husband of Olga. Olga does not immediately recognize Jack, and he makes no attempt to remind her of their previous relationship. Sunshine asks Jack to take in her three widowed sisters as wives and father children with them. He is reluctant at first but finally agrees and has sex with all three.
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One day during the winter season, Custer and the 7th Cavalry make a surprise attack on the Cheyenne camp. A now-blind and elderly Old Lodge Skins is saved by Jack and the Circle of Life. Sunshine and their child are killed along with her sisters. Jack tries to infiltrate Custer's camp to exact revenge, but at the crucial moment, with a razor to Custer's neck, Jack loses his nerve, and is mocked by Custer for it. Disheartened, Jack becomes the town drunk in
Deadwood, South Dakota. While in a drunken stupor he is recognized by Wild Bill Hickok, who gives him money to clean up. When Jack returns to the bar, Hickok is shot and killed. With his last breath, Hickok expresses to Jack a dying wish involving a widow he was having an affair with. Jack goes to see the widow, a
prostitute who turns out to be a Mrs. Louise Pendrake. Jack gives her the money that Hickock intended for her to use in order to start a new life.
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Jack soon becomes a
trapper and
hermit. His mind becomes unhinged after coming across an empty trap with a severed animal limb. Poised at the edge of a cliff, he prepares to commit
suicide. Jack suddenly hears the faint chords of
Garryowen echoing through the valley and spots Custer and his troops marching nearby. Jack decides to exact revenge. Custer accepts him as a scout, believing anything he says will be a lie, thus serving as a reverse barometer. Jack leads the troops into a trap at the
Little Bighorn. Before the attack, Jack truthfully tells Custer of the overwhelming force of Native Americans hidden within the valley. Custer does not believe him and leads the 7th Cavalry to its doom. During the frantic battle, Custer begins a series of insane ravings. Ignoring the closing circle of warriors, Custer decides to kill Jack and points his pistol at him. Before he can pull the trigger, Custer is killed by Younger Bear, who removes the unconscious, wounded Jack from the battle by carrying him to Old Lodge Skins'
tepee.
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With Custer and his regiment annihilated, Jack accompanies Old Lodge Skins to a nearby hill where the weary leader decides to end his life. He gives his speech to the
Great Spirit, saying he is ready to die. Instead, it begins to rain. Old Lodge Skins sighs and says, "Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't." It is not his time to die. They return to his tepee to have dinner.
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Jack's narrative abruptly ends and he tells the historian to leave the room. The film concludes with an extended shot of the elderly Jack sadly staring into space.
Historical basis
The historical Little Big Man was a Native American bearing no resemblance to the Jack Crabb character. Little Big Man is known for his involvement in the capture and possible assassination of
Crazy Horse at
Fort Robinson in 1877.
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The movie's portrayal of the
Battle of Washita River as a Custer-led massacre of women and children (which Penn compares to the holocaust) is not specifically accurate as the camp was partially occupied by tribal warriors. The film, however, is consistent with some historical records of other encounters between Indians and the U.S. Cavalry; the Cavalry's common tactic was to wait until the warriors had left the camp to hunt, or to lure the warriors away with assurances of good hunting, and then to attack the unprotected village. The two massacre scenes are historically reversed, the
Sand Creek massacre occurring first in 1864, where Colorado militia troops (not including Custer) attacked a peaceful contingent of Native Americans, killing more than 150 women, children and elderly men (this
was depicted in another 1970 Revisionist Western,
Soldier Blue). The Custer-led raid on the Washita occurred in 1868.
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The movie also presents the audience with a false representation of the death of
Wild Bill Hickok. Hickok was actually killed on August 2, 1876, while playing poker at the No. 10 Saloon in
Deadwood,
South Dakota. Uncharacteristically, Hickok had his back turned to the door. At 4:15 PM, a gunslinger named Jack McCall walked in and shot Hickok in the back of the head. Hickok was famously holding a pair of black aces and black eights when he was shot, a set of cards thereafter called the "Dead Man's Hand."
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The film's depiction of Lieutenant Colonel
George Armstrong Custer as a lunatic at the
Battle of the Little Bighorn was intended as a comedic satire, though many of his quirks and vanities were inspired by contemporary observations. Custer's fatal tactics at Little Bighorn were far more complex than portrayed in the film. His actions before and during the battle remain intensely controversial to this day though even revisionist historians agree he was largely sympathetic to the cause of the Indian population and publicly opposed, to the detriment of his own career prospects, to the Grant Administration's policy of expansion into Indian lands.
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The character of Jack Crabb is partially based on
Curley, one of Custer's
Native American scouts from the
Crow tribe. It is believed Curley rode with Custer's 7th Cavalry into the final battle until they were attacked, at which point he was relieved of duty, retreating to a nearby bluff and witnessing much of the action. Many conflicting stories of the era embellished Curley's participation, stating in several cases that he disguised himself with a Cheyenne blanket to escape the immediate field of battle. He was interviewed many times, with some writers claiming him to be the only surviving witness from the U.S. side of
Custer's Last Stand. Curley gave several variations of his participation in the battle, and the accuracy of his later recollections has been questioned.
Awards
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Production
Hoffman holds the record for portraying the greatest age span of a single character, playing Jack Crabb from the age of 17 to 121, a difference of 104 years. To obtain the hoarse voice of a 121 year-old man, Dustin Hoffman sat in his dressing room and screamed at the top of his lungs for an hour. The 121 year-old makeup was created by
Dick Smith from
foam latex and included revolutionary old-age eyelids that could actually blink along with the actor's. Due to editing, and much to Smith's chagrin, no blinks were visible in the finished film. Of the makeup, Hoffman was quoted in
Life magazine as saying, "I defy you to put on that makeup and not feel old."
[2] The role of Chief Old Lodge Skins was initially offered to
Marlon Brando,
Paul Scofield and
Laurence Olivier, all of whom turned it down. The Little Bighorn battle scenes were filmed on location in Montana near the actual battle site.
Critical reception
The film
Little Big Man has, over the years, garnered generally positive reviews. It is among
AFI's 400 movies nominated to be on their list of America's greatest 100 movies
[3] In his December 15, 1970 review, Vincent Canby of
The New York Times called the movie, "Arthur Penn's most extravagant and ambitious movie, an attempt to capture the essence of the American heritage in the funny, bitter, uproarious adventures of Jack Crabb."
[4] Roger Ebert agreed, giving the movie four stars, and describing
Little Big Man as "an endlessly entertaining attempt to spin an epic in the form of yarn."
[5] References
[edit] External links
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