Little Big Man

Plot synopsis:
In the present day 1970, 121-year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman), the oldest living man in the world, who resides in a hospice, is recounting his long and colorful life story to a curious historian (William Hickey). Among other things, Crabb claims to have been a captive of the Cheyenne, a gunslinger, an associate of Wild Bill Hickok, a scout for General George Armstrong Custer, and the sole white survivor of Custer's force at the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn. Having been adopted by the Cheyenne and reared in their culture, Crabb tells the Historian that he has perspective on both Caucasian and Native American life in the 19th century.Flashing back to 1859, the 10-year-old Jack and his older sister Caroline (Carole Androsky) survive the massacre of their parents' wagon train by the hostile Pawnee warriors. Found by a Cheyenne warrior, Jack and his sister are taken back to a Cheyenne village. Caroline manages to escape on horseback, but Jack is reared by good-hearted tribal leader Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George). Life among the Cheyenne proves to be idyllic, though Jack unwittingly makes an enemy of another boy, Younger Bear (Cal Bellini). However, Younger Bear eventually owes his life to Jack, who saves him from a Pawnee warrior. Jack is given the name "Little Big Man" because he's short but very brave.In 1865, when Jack is age 16, he is captured by U.S. cavalry troopers after skirmish between them and the local Cheyenne. Jack then renounces his Native American upbringing in order to save himself from being killed. After his interrogation and debriefing, and being that he is still a minor, Jack is put in the care of Reverend Silas Pendrake (Thayer David) and his sexually frustrated wife, Louise (Faye Dunaway), who tries to seduce Jack. Jack cannot accept the contradiction between Louise's piety and sexual appetite. When Jack finds Louise one day seducing the owner of a local soda shop/pharmacy, he leaves the Pendrake household.A year or so later, Jack becomes the apprentice of the snake-oil salesman Merriweather (Martin Balsam). The two are 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 (after his favorite beverage). 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 gun slinging and Caroline deserts him.Another year or two later, Jack becomes a partner in a general store and marries a Swedish woman named Olga (Kelly Jean Peters). Unfortunately, Jack's business partner turns out to be a thieving scoundrel and Jack is forced to close the store. The famous cavalry officer George Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan) happens upon the scene and suggests the couple re-start their lives further west.Jack and Olga set out, but their stagecoach is ambushed by Cheyenne hostiles. Olga is abducted and Jack sets out in search for her. 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 bitter. After a short stay with the tribe, Jack continues his search for Olga.He eventually becomes a "muleskinner" in Custer's 7th Cavalry, hoping to obtain information on Olga's whereabouts. He takes part in a battle against the Cheyenne, but when the 7th troopers begin killing unarmed women and children, Jack becomes enraged and turns on them. Nearby, Jack discovers a Cheyenne woman, Sunshine (Aimée Eccles), giving birth. He saves Sunshine from the marauding troopers and returns with her to Old Lodge Skins's tribe. Sunshine becomes his wife and, the following year, bears him a child of their own. Jack again encounters Younger Bear, who has undergone another life change. No longer a contrary, Younger Bear is now the henpecked husband of the long-lost Olga, who has become a Cheyenne squaw. Olga does not recognize Jack, who makes no attempt to remind her of their previous relationship. Sunshine asks Jack to take in her three widowed sisters as wives and to father children with them. He is reluctant at first, but finally agrees and has sex with all three in succession.One day during the winter season, Custer and the 7th Cavalry make a surprise attack on a Cheyenne camp in Oklahoma (to be known as the Battle of Washita River, which took place on November 27, 1868). A now-blind and elderly Old Lodge Skins is saved by Jack, but Sunshine and their child are killed along with her sisters. Jack tries to infiltrate Custer's camp to exact revenge. At a crucial moment, with knife in hand, Jack loses his nerve, and is mocked by Custer for it.Flashing forward eight years later in 1876, a disheartened Jack has become 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 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 Louise Pendrake. Jack gives her the money that Hickok intended for her to use to start a new life.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 the traditional cavalry tune Garryowen echoing through a valley and spots Custer and his troops marching nearby. Jack decides to exact revenge. Custer, who remembers that Jack once tried to assassinate him, hires him 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 on June 25, 1876. Before the attack, Jack truthfully tells Custer of the overwhelming force of Native Americans hidden within the valley of the Little Bighorn. The arrogant and overconfident Custer does not believe him and leads the 7th Cavalry to its doom. During the frantic battle, Custer begins to rave insanely while Jack is wounded. Ignoring the closing circle of massed Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, Custer points his pistol at Jack. Before he can pull the trigger, Custer is shot and killed by Younger Bear, who removes the unconscious, wounded Jack from the battle by carrying him to Old Lodge Skins' tepee pretending that he is carrying a fellow warrior. Having thus discharged his life debt, Younger Bear tells Jack that the next time they meet, he can kill Jack without becoming an evil person.Some days later at the Indian camp, the recovering Jack accompanies Old Lodge Skins to a nearby hill, the Indian Burial Ground, where the old man, dressed in full Chief's regalia, has declared "It is a good day to die", and decides to end his life with dignity. He offers his spirit to the Great Spirit, and lies down at his spot at the Indian Burial Ground to wait for death. Instead, it begins to rain. Old Lodge Skins is revealed to still be alive, and says, "Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't". They return to his tepee to have dinner.Back in the present, Jack's narrative abruptly ends and he dismisses the Historian who leaves the room. The film concludes with an extended shot of the elderly Jack sitting in his wheelchair and sadly staring into space.... thinking about the memories of a world which is no more.

Tags: murder, cult, violence, cute, historical fiction, flashback, revenge, alternate history

Review:
This is one of those movies you have to see if you like great films.This is a long movie but it is so good you'll never want it to end.I rated this movie a 10 but only cause the scale doesn't go any higher.This is the story of Jack Crabb who begins the movie as a 121 year old man in a nursing home recounting his life.And what a life it was.He bounces back and forth in the Old west between the world of the white man and the world of the Native American.Crabb sees and does just about everything possible in both worlds.The joy and sadness and fun he has along the way makes for one helluva movie.Dustin Hoffman is brilliant in this film.It may be his best performance ever yet it is somehow overlooked when many people think of his movies.It is a tour de force for Hoffman who plays an Indian and gunslinger and drunkard and muleskinner and many other things in this movie.
Richard Mulligan was so perfect as General George Custer in this movie that he is who I see whenever I hear the name of Custer mentioned.Faye Dunaway and Martin Balsam create memorable characters too.This movie makes one of the strongest statements I've ever seen about the treatment of the Native Americans yet you probably won't even realize it at the time.This is a movie that you'll replay in your head and then it hits you that there was even more there than met the eye.The humor,tragedy and lush characters will stay with you long after you see this movie.This movie is based on the fine book by Thomas Berger and is very faithful to it.I recommend the book wholeheartedly, too..
Little Big Man is an exceptionally well done movie (the cast, the direction, and the great acting of Hoffman, chief Dan, and of course the sexy Faye).
Dustin Hoffman excels in one of his early film roles, throwing himself into its physical demands with obvious enthusiasm and in the process creating one of his most endearing characters.But he had to be on his toes in the face of much scene-stealing by a host of experts, including Richard Mulligan as the screwiest Custer you'll ever see, Martin Balsam as the eternally optimistic Mr. Merriweather, and Chief Dan George as Old Lodgeskins, a noble, wise and very funny Native American patriarch.
Jack is abducted by Indians, raised by the preacher's ultra sexy wife, becomes the fastest gun in the west, sells dodgy "medicine" and joins General Custer at Little Big Horn.A MUST SEE if you ask me.And to top it off, the blues great John Hammond provides a fantastic score.
LITTLE BIG MAN (western, 1970) From his Hospital bedside 121-year old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) recounts his exploits to a reporter: Captured by Cheyenne Indians at the age of 10 he's integrated into their 'alien' society and made the son of Indian 'Old Lodge Skies' (Chief Dan George).
The latter landing him under the command of General Custer (Richard Mulligan), who's putting together an army to fight the Indians at Little Big Horn.Critique: Extremely enjoyable, epic western directed by Arthur Penn.
Calder Willingham's adaptation removes the ambivalence inherent in the novel and thereby writes one of the first and greatest revisionist Hollywood Westerns.Little Big Man is a great movie, as I have said, and it deserves much more notoriety than it receives.
`Little big man' the film is another cinematic oxymoron: a tragi-comedy.Most of Penn's movies are double-edged swords presenting serious subjects with a twinkle in the eye--`The Miracle Worker' seems to be an exception to the rule.
Chief Dan George, Dustin Hoffman, and cinematographer Harry Stradling Jr have considerably contributed to this fine cinematic achievement, but ultimate giant behind the film is Arthur Penn.He has presented yet another example of looking at a subject and seeing two sides of the coin that appear as contradictions but together enhances our entertainment..
Also mustn't be discarded the role of the time when the Little Big Man was made, the turbulent era of the Vietnam War, which most certainly found its reflection on the film, critically paralleled in portrayal of the ruthless and mindless slaughter of the Indians by the American troops.
We follow his life story as he is kidnapped and raised by the Indians, after a few years escaping from them only to return back again to witness the brutal death of his friends and loved ones from the hands of the American soldiers under the command of vicious and eccentric General George Armstrong Custer who finally has to pay for his inhuman deeds in the battle of the Little Big Horn that is shown in the end of the film and which might be considered as the natural consequence of the brutal tactics employed by the American troops in conquering the Indian territories, and finally represents a significant lightening of the karmic burden for them, achieved by the purificatory and relieving death in the fight with the Indians whose victory symbolize only a temporarily successful culmination of destined-not-to-last-long struggle.
Though in Jack Crabb's life story we basically revisit a number of very familiar for a Western genre fan fields, one of them being the battlefield of the Little Big Horn, the masterful way in which revisiting is done turn it into an unforgettable viewing experience during which you'll most certainly find yourself moved from laughing at the perfect comic moments of parody on some of the most used Western clichés to shedding tears when tragic happenings unveil on the screen, always remaining absorbed by it, mesmerized by the superb acting delivered by all of the actors involved and the film's visually vast beauty.
Arthur Penn's Little Big Man is a lesson in man's inhumanity to man, mixing historical events and characters with fictional ones.I first saw this film in Junior High School, about 1978 and we actually watched it during history class over three days.
If people dismiss this movie as 'just another western', they are missing out on one of the finest films ever made.I applaud the use of REAL Native American actors in little Big Man. There were so many Hollywood films and TV shows with Native Americans often portrayed by white actors of Jewish, Italian and German heritage.The US.
Released in 1970 and directed by Arthur Penn, "Little Big Man" is narrated by 121 year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman), who details a tall tale of his colorful exploits in the Old West.
Events include: Growing up with the Cheyanne, his adoptive family/tribe; a religious period with a striking hypocritical woman (Faye Dunaway); working as a snake oil huckster; living as a (funny) gunslinger who meets Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey); working for General Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan); his many conversations with this loving adoptive grandfather (Chief Dan George); and many more.This is a historically significant Western, coming out at the height (and twilight) of the hippie movement, and the movie reflects this.
I think it is way too long, at least .30 minutes could have been edited without affecting the story line as we follow Jack Crabb and his various lives as an Indian brave, religious zealot, gunfighter, town drunk, medicine show con man, hermit, cavalry scout, etc.The best part of this was Chief Dan George as the Cherokee chief.
"Little Big Man" is highly uneven, but always fascinating.Arthur Penn directed this picaresque tall tale about a man (played by Dustin Hoffman) who experiences first-hand much of America's ugly history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Indians refer to themselves as the "Human Beings", and it's clear where Penn's sympathies lie; as a matter of fact, Chief Dan George was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar (and deservedly so) for his wonderful characterization of the old Indian sage who takes Dustin Hoffman under his wing.The 'white' cast is impeccable as well, however - Hoffman (who gets to age to a 121!) and Faye Dunaway are in top form, but it's the character actors who really shine: Martin Balsam as the quack medicine salesman (who loses a limb every time he appears!), Jeff Corey as Wild Bill Hickock, and especially Richard Mulligan as a lunatic's idea(!) of Custer.
As craftsmanship, the film is mediocre; the film looks like it was shot on a soundstage, and gives the viewer no feeling for nature or the absurd, crazy poetry of American Indian life that is so much a part of what makes the book so successful; Berger's superbly sophisticated and imaginative moral absurdism has been turned into crude, ugly, cheap, cartoonish left-wing caricature that resembles the work of Oliver Stone; and, aside from the one glorious exception of Chief Dan George, in his wonderful turn as Old Lodge Skins, the performances are gross, sloppy and impersonal, with Dustin Hoffman terribly miscast, his innocent, square, adenoidal man-child persona subtly but completely wrong for the sketchiness and semi-amoral pragmatism of Jack Crabb, a man who drifts between two opposed lifestyles, American and Indian, forming no loyalty with either – a character which would require a projection, not of guilt or corruption, but of simple adult knowledge, something Hoffman is incapable of..
Very imaginative direction by Arthur Penn, great performances by Hoffman, Chief Dan George (if I recall correctly, the only Native American to be nominated for an Oscar), Faye Dunaway, and the rest.
So finally Little big man is released on DVD, great news, it ranked as one of my favorite "realism" westerns along with Cullpepper cattle company, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (Peckinpah) and of course The ultimate ballad of the West 'The Wild Bunch', but a movie that made a lasting impression on me was Soldier Blue.
The story depicts events on both sides leading up to the battle of little bighorn as told through flashbacks by Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman at his best), the 121 year old soul white survivor.
Jack is like a fly on the wall of many momentous events from the wild west, almost like a western version of Forrest Gump.At the beginning of the film the old version of Crabb (Hoffman, in an incredible make-up job) tells an interviewer to turn on his tape recorder and shut up and he'd tell the story of the "human beings".
Jack is captured back by the whites as a teenager after an Indian battle, raised by preachers wife Louise Pendrake (Faye Dunaway), and from this point on he goes back and forth between the whites and the Cheyenne as his story unfolds.Jack continually will come across people from his past and each time it happens it changes the direction of his life; he meets a snake oil salesman (Martin Balsom, perfectly cast) with one eye, and each time he meets him again he's missing another body part"you're getting whittled down pretty good Mr. Meriwether"then he ends up being abducted by his long lost sister who teaches Jack how to shoot and thus he becomes a gunslinger and is befriended by Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey).
It's hard to put into words just how insightful and ironic that scene is right before the battle the voice-over of Jack says "I had him now, but what I had wasn't a knifebut the truth"while the pitiful Custer is all pomp and arrogance, too proud (and stupid) to realize Jack is telling the exact truth, and the poor aide can see the whole thing coming but can do nothing as Custer's bloated ego leads them all to their doom.One of the great things about Little Big Man is seeing the recurring characters all having their destinies fulfilled, whether its Lulu becoming a prostitute and then going to live with her aunt, or Meriwether losing his limbs one by one, or Hickok getting gunned down in Deadwood holding his aces and eights, or Custer being turned into a "greasy spot" on Medicine tail coulée.Well, then there's old Lodgeskins, who had often made mention of it being "a good day to die".
Both sides were brutal--Old Lodge skins even says (in the book) "Live not as whites or Indians, but as people."If a mere movie can taint a person's perception of a quietly affecting landmark like the Little Big Horn, I have to question the depth of the observer..
Custer's attack on the Washita was perhaps intended to trigger thoughts of the Calley massacre at My Lai, the trial of which was going on the same year as the film.And I seriously doubt whether Custer was quite as crazy as Richard Mulligan portrays him in "Little Big Man." Egotistical, yes, but I don't think he suddenly started calling people "Mr. President" at the Last Stand and tried to murder them.But the film is also a subtle satire of the west.
I can see why some folks won't like this film: it has a tone that is incredibly uneven, at different times diving deeply into very funny comedy and utterly tragic drama; it has an utterly unforgiving sense of violence and death; it doesn't pull any punches with the concept of the destruction of the Native Americans by the "white man"; and it's exceptionally long.
There are a lot of great performances including and beyond Dustin Hoffman, and production is rock solid, yet it doesn't quite fit in the world of comedy or drama, and Little Big Man runs too long for the impatient.
Little Big Man in my opinion tells the truth showing the Native American side of what happened after the civil war in the west and portrayed the "great" George Armstrong Custer for what he truly was.
Highly entertaining saga has Dustin Hoffman as the lone elderly survivor of the attack at Little Big Horn, recounting his life history to a skeptical historian--and it's quite a story, beginning with the massacre of his family in an Indian attack as a ten year-old boy and his growing up among the Cheyennes who adopt him and call him "Little Big Man" when he proves he's a worthy "human being" among them.The handsomely produced tale, filmed in gorgeous color on what appear to be actual locales, follows him throughout episodes always spiced by wicked humor.
Especially funny is the sequence where he's delivered to the doorstep of a minister and his wife (FAYE DUNAWAY), a woman who quotes the Bible but has more earthy matters on her mind when she sets eyes on Dustin and assumes the duty of bathing him while promising to avert her eyes at the proper moment.The humor is beneath even the most serious scenes, so that we know the tall tale is being offered as a tongue-in-cheek treatment of Indian/white relationships, as well as a re-evaluation by Hoffman of what General George Armstrong Custer was really like.
Caught up in the Zeitgeist of the era Penn's ambitious attempt to debunk legends and bring attention by way of metaphor to the Viet Nam War, defined by the actions at My Lai, it lumbers along for well over two hours and loses a considerable amount of impact along the way.One hundred and seventeen year old nursing home resident and only white survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn Jack Crabbe (Dustin Hoffman)narrates his picaresque journey of being raised by Indians and encounters with General Custer, Wild Bill Hickock and lesser stock types (greedy gun runner, lustful Sunday School teacher) to give a true account of the American West.
It stars Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam, Chief Dan George and Richard Mulligan.Arthur Penn's Little Big Man is tagged with many filmic sayings, be it revisionist or anti Western etc, it's a picture much cherished for its oddly quirky slyness.
An historian interviews cranky 121-year-old Dustin Hoffman (as Jack Crabb), who promises to reveal truths about General Custer, "The Battle of Little Big Horn" and Indians (Native Americans).
Native Americans were way ahead of their time.******* Little Big Man (1970-12-14) Arthur Penn ~ Dustin Hoffman, Dan George, Faye Dunaway, Richard Mulligan.
LITTLE BIG MAN is a playful film with good spirits about a man who throughout his adventurous life is drawn between the Red Indians and the white man of the American West.
A historian wants to know the story of a 121- year old man, Jack Crabb.He tells how he became a member of the Cheyenne tribe, how he became the apprentice of a snake-oil salesman, how he knew Wild Bill Hickok and General George Armstrong Custer.Little Big Man (1970) is a western directed by Arthur Penn.The movie is based on the 1964 novel by Thomas Berger.Dustin Hoffman is amazing as Jack Crabb, both young and old.Faye Dunaway is very fine as Mrs. Pendrake.Chief Dan George is great as Old Lodge Skins.Martin Balsam is terrific as Mr. Merriweather.Richard Mulligan does great work as Custer.Jeff Corey is very fine as Wild Bill Hickok.Caroline Androsky is very good as Caroline Crabb.M. Emmett Walsh is seen as Shotgun Guard.The movie is a different kind of a western movie.It's something never seen before.The movie is full of drama, like in those battle scenes.Then it can be funny, like when Mrs. Pendrake gives a bath to Jack.Or when Jack has to bed his Indian wife's three sisters.And his gunslinger name The Sodapop Kid is just hilarious.I recommend you'd listen to the story of Jack Crabb.This is a big story of a little man..
The Thoman Berger novel about the life and times of a white man raised by Indians is turned into an entertaining epic Western by Penn.
The plot is interesting and the acting is good, Dustin Hoffman was great as Little Big Man. I like how there is some actual history involved like Custers Last Stand and the genocide of the Indians.
Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman), looking back from extreme old age, tells of his life being raised by Indians and fighting with General Custer.This film starts off strong with a relative young William Hickey.