Skip to main content

Plot

Recounting how the West was won through the eyes of a white man raised as a Native American, Arthur Penn's 1970 adaptation of Thomas Berger's satirical novel was a comic yet stinging allegory about the bloody results of American imperialism. As a misguided 20th-century historian listens, 121-year-old Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) narrates the story of being the only white survivor of Custer's Last Stand. White orphan Crabb was adopted by the Cheyenne, renamed "Little Big Man," and raised in the ways of the "Human Beings" by paternal mentor Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George), accepting non-conformity and living peacefully with nature. Violently thrust into the white world, Jack meets a righteous preacher (Thayer David) and his wife (Faye Dunaway), tries to be a gunfighter under the tutelage of Wild Bill Hickock (Jeff Corey), and gets married. Returned to the Cheyenne by chance, Jack prefers life as a Human Being. The carnage wreaked by the white man in the Washita massacre and the lethal fallout from the egomania of General George A. Custer (Richard Mulligan) at Little Big Horn, however, show Crabb the horrific implications of Old Lodge Skins' sage observation, "There is an endless supply of White Men, but there has always been a limited number of Human Beings."
MPAA Rating:
PG-13
Genre(s):
Westerns
Run Time:
139min.
Theatrical Release Date:
10/10/2004
DVD Release Date:
04/29/2003
Director(s):
Arthur Penn
Starring:
Dustin Hoffman , Faye Dunaway , Martin Balsam , Richard Mulligan , Chief Dan George
Themes:
Culture Clash,Social Injustice,White People Among Indians
Tone:
Confrontational,Disturbing,Humorous,Earnest
Keywords:
General,Indian (Native-American)-chief,Indian (Native-American)-tribe,Native-American,battle [war],cavalry,cross-cultural-relations,flashback,gunfighter,historical-spoof,last-stand,massacre,race/ethnicity,recollection,survivor
Language:
English