Year of North American Indigenous Peoples Film and Discussion Series Presents:

Little Big Man (1970)

Directed by Arthur Penn.

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Martin Balsam, Jeff Corey, Chief Dan George, Faye Dunaway, Richard Mulligan.

Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) is 121 years old. And he's done it all. He's been a full-fledged Cheyenne, an Indian fighter, a snake oil merchant, master gunman, drinking buddy of wild Bill Hickok, colleague of Buffalo Bill, and is the only survivor of Custer's Last Stand. Crabb is either the Old West's most neglected hero or the biggest liar ever to cross the Mississippi. Little Big Man is Jack Crabb's story. In their article, "The Hollywood Indian in Little Big Man: A Revisionist View," Margo Kasdan and Susan Tavernetti comment: " In Little Big Man, Arthur Penn directed a film that inverts the mythologies of American frontier history usually presented in the western genre, and, in particular, the story of the westward expansion. The film combines established generic conventions--the post-Civil War period, Great Plains setting, conflict between whites and Indians--with a reconsideration of western history, a revisionist treatment of legendary figures of the time, of the western hero, and of Native Americans in a comic and ironic tone. This combination makes the film distinctive (while at the same time sows the seeds for such contemporary westerns as Dances with Wolves).