Synopsis
Little Big Man (1970) is Arthur Penn's sprawling Western, and you can watch online on iFILM. Its narrator is 121 years old. Jack Crabb, the oldest man alive, sits with a tape recorder and unspools a life nobody would believe.
Orphaned young, Jack is raised by the Cheyenne, then yanked back into white society, then back again — over and over. Across the decades he turns gunfighter beside Wild Bill Hickok, snake-oil huckster, husband, drunk, and finally a scout who watches General Custer march his men straight into the slaughter at Little Bighorn. Dustin Hoffman carries the whole thing, aging from a teenager to a wheezing centenarian under pounds of makeup that you somehow forget about.
Adapted from Thomas Berger's novel, the film flips the genre on its head: the Cheyenne are warm, funny, fully human, while the U.S. cavalry brings the cruelty. It's a bitter comedy about who gets called a hero and who gets called a liar. Chief Dan George, as Jack's adoptive grandfather Old Lodge Skins, nearly steals it from Hoffman. Stream Little Big Man (1970) online on iFILM.
Starring
Comments 0