Sometimes you just need a little laugh (Best Little Write-Off)

How can a movie go wrong, when it pairs up Dustin Hoffman with Faye Dunaway? Well, when you give Dunaway only twenty minutes out of more than two hours, a lot can go wrong. But that’s okay, because the things that go wrong for Dustin Hoffman are right for the movie. His character suffers one misfortune after another, making the story worth watching.

This 1970 film, based on Thomas Berger’s novel and directed by Arthur Penn, actually uses Native Americans to play the Native Americans. The credits include Chief Dan George and Robert Littlestar.

Plot? What plot?

It begins with Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) as an old man telling the story of how he was raised by Indians, then rescued by soldiers, raised and educated by a preacher, and finally became a scout for Custer. He claims to be the only white man to survive “Custer’s Last Stand” at Little Bighorn.

An oral historian has come to the nursing home and asked Crabb about his life. When he turns on the tape recorder, he gets more of a story than he bargained for.

This film is about more than cowboys and Indians. On one level, this is an epic adventure, but it is so funny and the characters are so exaggerated, that I have to classify it as a picaresque comedy.

The episodic story shows Jack Crabb being pushed along by events, never taking control of his own life or his own fate. Over the course of his lifetime, he is alternately attacked and captured by Indians, and then by white soldiers, several times. He lets others tell him what to do with his life, and he does not try to escape.

Highlights

Richard Mulligan plays Custer as crazy man, a funny crazy man. He has a sense of dignity, but at heart he is more of a politician than a soldier. He is portrayed as a mass murderer of innocent women and children. The scene in which the cavalry attacks a sleeping village is awful. Custer’s death scene is dignified and tragic, but Mulligan seems somehow comical as he plays out the scene.

Chief Dan George steals a few scenes as Old Lodgeskins, a wise old Native American sage with a great sense of humor and a touch of senility.

The preacher’s wife (Faye Dunaway) gives Dustin Hoffman an erotic bath. He is in love with her until he finds her going at it with a shopkeeper.

Thoughts

Outrageous coincidence plays a major role in the story, such as when Crabb is tarred and feathered along with the snake oil salesman, by his own sister Caroline. When she recognizes her brother, she cleans him up and takes him into her family.

Despite the constant joking around, and the highly improbable coincidences, this movie does have an air of reality. It shows some of the painful, brutal truth about the campaigns against American Indians that took place in the 1880s. It also gives a pretty good account of what life was like in an Indian village.

The Native Americans are not portrayed as completely innocent, or as saints. For example, the men completely dominate the women, imprisoning them in subservient roles.

I get grossed out when the Indians eat boiled dog.

Some of the outdoor scenes are magnificent.

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Run time 139 minutes

Screenplay by Calder Willingham

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Thank you so much for reading my movie review!

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