Little Big Man

Dustin Hoffman ages a century in Arthur Penn’s picaresque anti-western, the tall tale of 121-year-old Jack Crabb, a white man rescued and raised by the Cheyenne, a one-time snake-oil salesman, gunslinger, and mule skinner under General George Custer (Richard Mulligan) — which is how he came to be at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Vancouver’s own Chief Dan George plays Jack’s foster father with great warmth and wit. As in Thomas Berger’s novel, Penn swings from farce to tragedy, mocking the callous, racist colonizers. The indigenous peoples are afforded more respect, but not the reverence you find in the pious Dances with Wolves. Even so, the film has epic qualities. It’s one of the great lost movies of its time.

Penn has made a tangy and, I think, unique film with American verve, about some of the grisly things that American verve has done.

Stanley Kauffman, The New Republic

Hoffman’s triumph could have been anticipated, but the marvellous performance by Chief Dan George is a revelation. It has a patriarchal dignity blended with a complex sense of irony about his own image.

Urjo Kareda, Toronto Star