By Richard Winters
My Rating: 8 out of 10
4-Word Review: Raised as an Indian.
Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) has reached the age of 121 and agrees to a taped interview with a reporter (William Hickey). He recounts his life events including being kidnapped by Cheyenne Indians in 1859 when he was 10 and befriending their tribal leader Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George) who gives him the nickname Little Big Man. He then goes on to elaborate other life events like being captured by the U.S. Calvary where he is placed in the home of a Reverend (Thayer David) and his beautiful wife (Faye Dunaway) who despite her professed Christianity is having an affair with a soda shop owner, which disillusions Jack from religion altogether. He also goes through his marriage to a Swedish immigrant named Olga (Kelly Jean Peters) and how she gets kidnapped by the Cheyenne during a stagecoach ride and Jack’s attempts to find her, which reunites him with Old Lodge Skins and leads him to meet General Custer (Richard Mulligan), who he initially admires, but eventually learns to despise.
The film is based on the 1964 novel by Thomas Berger of the same name and wonderfully mixes the whimsical style of that book into the movie and maintains overall an excellent balance between quirky moments, of which there’s many and jarring scenes dealing with Indian Massacres by the U.S. Calvary, which remains effectively disturbing and impactful despite all the humor that goes on in between. The impressive cinematography by Harry Stradling Jr. that manages to capture the Big Sky Country, filmed on-location in Montanna where many of these historical events actually occurred, in all of its glory and makes you feel like you’ve genuinely been physically transported back to that era.
The most amazing element though, which comes up right away, is the makeup effects on Hoffman where he’s made to look about as elderly as you can get and hats-off to makeup artist Dick Smith to achieve it in such an effective way. While aging of characters has been attempted in other films, I’ve never seen it so realistic as here and in fact it still holds claim even after all these years in the Guiness Book of World Records as ‘The Greatest Age Span Portrayed by a Movie Actor’. My only quibble is that his eyes as an old man appear to be blue even though for the rest of the movie Hoffman’s eyes are clearly brown.
The acting all around is superb starting of course with Hoffman and then moving onto Dunaway whose first attempt at comedy this was and she’s really funny if not a complete scene-stealer. Thayer David awesome too as her bombastic minister husband and I wished there had been more scenes with him. Chief Dan George is quite memorable as the Indian Chief, he became the first Native American ever nominated for an Oscar for his work here, in a part that was originally intended for Marlon Brando who thankfully turned it down as having a genuine Native American makes it so much more compelling. Great work too by the lesser-known Kelly Jean Peters whose frantic screams of terror, as she’s being kidnapped, I found to be both funny and frightening at the same time.
While it doesn’t affect one’s enjoyment of the movie, the film does have a few drawbacks, or moments that could’ve been done slightly better. Having Hoffman constantly come back into contact with people he had been with years earlier got a bit too cute for its own good. I was okay with some of it, like his reunion with the Indian Chief, but having him literally re-meet everyone he had known before got unrealistic and almost monotonous. I also couldn’t understand why the people he meets again don’t recognize him right away as is the case with Dunaway, as Hoffman has a very distinct face that really doesn’t change much even as he ages, so forcing him to have to remind her who he was should’ve been quite unnecessary. Same goes in reverse with the reunion with his sister, played by Carole Androsky, I immediately recognized her voice even before seeing her face, but for Hoffman it takes a long time to remember who she is, but if I the viewer could detect her voice right away why couldn’t he?
Another issue is when he meets his wife Olga many years later when she’s become a part of an Indian tribe. When he married her she had a very strong Swedish accent and due to the language barrier could only say a very few words, basically just ‘Yah’. Then, when he sees her again, she speaks fluent English, but how could she have learned that by being in an Indian tribe? Also, she had completely lost her accent, which I don’t believe would happen. I’ve known people who have lived in this country for 30 or 40 years, but where originally from somewhere else and no matter how long they’ve been here, or how ‘Americanized’ they may become they still retain their original accent, or at least sufficient hints of it.
Spoiler Alert!
There’s also issues with the General Custer character. Acting wise I felt Richard Mulligan nailed it as he integrates a great blend of comic self-importance to him, but on the satire end it goes a little too far. He gets portrayed as being a complete buffoon with a clownish logic and such a severe narcissistic ego he’s unable to realize when everyone else around him thinks he’s an idiot. There were many different issues that went into the Battle of Little Big Horn, or more commonly known as Custer’s Last Stand, and this movie answers it by saying the guy running it was a self-deluded moron, which I suppose comically and emotionally is satisfying, but doesn’t sufficiently tackle the others nuances that were also involved. There’s also the argument over the demise of Wild Bill Hickok though having him get killed by a little kid was historically inaccurate I felt it was so humorously ironic that I was willing to forgive it.
The ending, where in the book Old Lodge Skins dies, but in the movie he doesn’t, annoyed some fans as well. Director Arthur Penn admitted in interviews that the earlier script drafts had him dying, but then he felt that would be ‘too depressing’ so they had him live, but I felt with such a picturesque back drop that having him lay down for his final resting place was appropriate. He was really old anyways and had also become blind, so having him get up and be led away by Hoffman was just prolonging the inevitable anyways, so they might as well have him go down when it was his time as ‘cheating it’ like they do here doesn’t really add all that much.
My Rating: 8 out of 10
Released: December 23, 1970
Runtime: 2 Hours 27 Minutes (Uncut) 2 Hour 19 Minutes (Studio Version)
Rated GP
Director: Arthur Penn
Studio: National General Pictures
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, PlutoTV, YouTube
Scopophilia 