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Sunday, August 11, 2013

Not-So-Old Movietime

"Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it don't."
"Let's go eat. My Snake wife cooks good food. I heard that Snake women copulate with horses, but my wife said she doesn't. I don't believe her, though."
And the old Indian and Little Big Man head down the hill at the end of the movie.

The first sentence above comes almost at the end, when  Old Lodge Skins goes up the mountain to its highest point to die, but it starts raining and he survives and says the second group of sentences above. Old Lodge Skins is portrayed by Chief Dan George and Little Big Man was of course Dustin Hoffman. Wikipedia says the movie was a protest against the military in the Viet Nam War and it may have been, since it was a long build-up to the Custer campaign at the Little Big Horn and the loss of everyone but Dustin Hoffman.

If you've never seen Little Big Man you may want to give it a go as it is a funny satire on the times of Custer and Wild Bill Hickok and others as the 120-year-old man (Dustin Hoffman) relates his life to a young reporter. He and his sister are found in a burned-out wagon by a lone Cheyenne after the Pawnee raided and killed the rest of the family. Hoffman is back and forth with the Cheyenne and the whites as he goes through life. Being adoped by a strong religious pastor with a horny wife (Faye Dunaway who later turns up working in a house of ill-repute), he becomes a gunslinger, a traveling medicne man's stooge, a drunk, a friend of Will Bill Hickock, etc., and barely escapes with his life when the Custer's men attack the tribe and later the battle of the Little Big Horn.

Like I said, it was a funny movie and just like the book by Thomas Berger in that regard and good entertainment for 147 minutes. Hoffman and Dunaway looked young, but acted their parts in fine fashion, in fact the overall acting and filming was just fine. Little Big Man, the movie, was released in 1970.



    

6 comments:

  1. I liked the movie quite well. I still haven't read the book but will some day.

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  2. This is one of my all-time favorite books. The movie was fun, I liked it also, but like so many, not as good as the book. I like every thing with, Chief Dan George or Dustin Hoffman in it.

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  3. I never thought Dustin Hoffman would make a good cowboy, but he did a credible job in this one.

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  4. I haven't seen Little Big Man in years. But, yes, a fine film and Hoffman delivers.

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