Three years after the influential Bonnie and Clyde director Arthur Penn helmed the epic and revisionist Western, Little Big Man. Based on the novel Thomas Berger and adapted for the screen by Calder Willingham Dustin Hoffman stars as Jack Crabb, a man whose various adventures take him back and forth between the Native American and white cultures. When Little Big Man was released in 1970, Jack Crabb represented a new kind of Western “hero,” one largely interested in his own survival.
It’s 1970, and 121-year-old Jack Crabb (Hoffman), a former frontiersman, scout, mule skinner, settler, storekeeper, gunfighter, and snake-oil salesman tells the story of his younger years to a historian (William Hickey) who wants to document his life. Not above a bit of exaggeration, Crabb’s tales are mostly humorous and occasionally sincere. While most of his recollections center on the white man’s treatment of the country’s Native Americans, they touch on major events in Western lore, culminating in the battle of the Little Big Horn, universally known as Custer’s Last Stand.
Jack’s story begins at a young age when his family is attacked and killed by a band of marauding Pawnee while crossing the Plains and his rescue by by the Cheyenne (the Human Beings, as they call themselves) and adoption by their Chief, Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George). Things continue with Crabb returning to the white community several years later and his upbringing as a teen by the Reverend Silas Pendrake (Thayer David) and his randy young wife (Faye Dunaway). Any religious beliefs Jack had go out the window when he discovers Mrs. Pendrake’s hypocrisy and declares to the historian, “I ain’t sung a hymn in 104 years.”
From there, Jack takes up with Mr. Allardice T. Merriweather (Martin Balsam), an optimistic con artist who loses parts of himself—a hand, an eye, a leg—as he repeatedly gets caught cheating people. After that, Jack enters a period as a gunfighter and meets Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey) in one of the film’s more amusing sections. After that, Jack gets married and has a short career as a storekeeper, and returns to the Cheyenne when Pawnee kidnap his wife. Later, he becomes a mule skinner for General George Armstrong Custer (Richard Mulligan); returns to the Cheyenne, and marries again. It’s really not surprising that Jack soon doesn’t know who or what he is. For Jack, things finally come to a head at Little Big Horn.
As with most of his performances during this time, Hoffman is outstanding throughout. He remains impressive even under pounds of age-old makeup. While many actors would overcompensate for the prosthetics with broader gesturing, but Hoffman remains subtle, saying a lot with his eyes.
Chief Dan George’s Old Lodge Skins is one of the great characters in Western cinema. A wise man (“the human beings … they believe everything is alive. Not only man and animals. But also water, earth, stone. … But the white man, they believe everything is dead”), his scenes with Hoffman are wonderful.
The film’s Panavision aspect ratio of 2.35:1 is presented in 1080p using the AVC codec. Color is wonderfully saturated throughout and flesh tones, while mostly realistic, occasionally appear rosy.. Sharpness is quite good, with only a few scenes that appear a bit soft. Black levels aren’t the blackest they could be, but they’re fine. There are occasional dust specks to be seen, but they aren’t a major problem.
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix places most of its surround emphasis on the music score by John Hammond. There are also some ambient sounds which find their way into the rears, but for the most part, the mix veers toward the front soundstage. Dialogue is perfect and has been placed in the center channel. There are no age-related artifacts like hiss or crackle to interfere with the listening experience.
A French Dolby Digital 2.0 track is included, as are English SDH subtitles.
The only included special feature is the Little Big Man trailer (1080p, 4:21).
