Little Big Man (film)

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Movie
German title Little Big Man
Original title Little Big Man
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1970
length 147 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Arthur Penn
script Calder Willingham
production Arthur Penn,
Gene Lasko ,
Stuart Millar
music John P. Hammond
camera Harry Stradling Jr.
cut Dede Allen
occupation

Little Big Man is an American Wild West film - in the strict sense an anti-Western - from 1970 and directed by Arthur Penn .

In the main role of the fictional white settler's son Jack Crabb, Dustin Hoffman portrays the development of a person who is confronted with different values and social norms , who grows up with Indians from the age of ten and is torn between cultures as an adult.

The script by Calder Willingham is based on the original novel of the same name by Thomas Berger from 1964, also known in German-speaking countries under the title "The Last Hero".

For Arthur Penn, one of the most important representatives of New Hollywood , it was the most expensive and at the same time most commercially successful film project in his career as a producer and director .

In 2014 the film was included in the National Film Registry - a directory of American films that are considered particularly worth preserving.

Form, intention and political-historical background

The epic -scale epic film in the style of a tragi-comedy with satirical pointed elements satirizes some essential and common themes of traditional Western genre, trying to demythologizing of the Wild West to contribute. In this sense, Little Big Man is considered to be one of the most successful anti-Westerners in film history: He contrasts the image of the heroic fighter for the ideals of the so-called American Dream with an antihero who is involved in the conflict between the culture of the prairie Indians and that of the white colonists in the USA apparently failed, but - at least in a moral sense - ultimately proved right.

The film takes up various historically guaranteed events and personalities from the pioneering days and the Indian wars in the United States in the second half of the 19th century, but allows them to appear in the overall fictional story in a very freely interpretive manner ; a narrative that is less owed to historical factuality than to the claim of a critical parable on the American way of life - with reference to individual historical facts from a time that shaped the way many Americans and the USA themselves see themselves today.

Furthermore, Little Big Man shows parallels to the Vietnam War with his view of the role of the US Army, which was extremely critical for the time of its creation (1970) . Not too long before filming began, the Mỹ Lai massacre had become known to the general public. The massacre on Washita depicted in the film indirectly illustrates in the form of an allegory director Arthur Penn's criticism of the current American warfare against the Vietnamese civilian population at the end of the 1960s / beginning of the 1970s. In addition to Soldier Blue (German title: The Lullaby from Manslaughter ) by Ralph Nelson from the same year, Little Big Man is considered to be one of the films that most succinctly expressed an anti-Vietnam War stance in the Western genre .

action

Intro

At the age of 121, Jack Crabb, a 1970s retirement home, veteran of the Indian Wars and sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn , is interviewed by a reporter who wants to hear about the "primitive Indian way of life." . Enraged by the arrogance of the young would-be historian, he tells him the story of his life.

Crabb with the Cheyenne

In the retrospective , the film goes back to the time around the 1860s / 1870s in the American Midwest , the area behind the so-called Frontier . At the age of ten, Crabb loses his family in a raid by Pawnee Indians on a migrant hike on the prairie . Only he and his sister Caroline survive. The siblings are found by Shadow that comes inside , a Cheyenne Indian, and taken to his tribal camp. Crabb's sister soon escapes, whereas he himself spends six years with the Cheyennes ( human being in the film ) on the prairie. He is adopted by Chief Old Lodge Skins (played by Chief Dan George ) as a grandson, so to speak. Crabb experiences a relatively happy youth among human beings , in which he can live out the needs of an adolescent for adventurous play - without restrictive instructions from the adults. He gets to know the language and customs of the Cheyennes and is introduced by his "grandfather" to the pantheistic worldview of the Cheyennes, according to which everything that exists is permeated with life and must be respected. In the meantime, the ideology of the “pale faces” is presented to him as a view in which the world and everything that lives is ultimately not appreciated as something “dead” and available.

Since Crabb lags behind in his physical growth development, he is initially not taken seriously by the young warriors because of his small body size. But in a skirmish with Pawnees, he gains peer acceptance when he saves the life of Younger Bear , a “tribal brother”. The latter is now indebted to him - albeit reluctantly - to lasting thanks; a life debt that can only be repaid through an equal consideration. Crabb is named after this event by the chief with the Indian name "Little Big Man" (little big man) , referring to his small body size and his great courage , and is thus included in the ranks of the warriors.

Crabb with the "pale faces"

After a battle between his “tribal brothers” and a unit of the US Army, he can only escape death by revealing himself to the soldiers as an Anglo-American and initially returning to the “pale faces”. There he is confronted with a world that has meanwhile become alien to him: through the eyes of a rather inexperienced young man, he experiences in different life situations that whoever wants to achieve something has to resort to hypocrisy , fraud, lies or violence - in the end then to perish from self-deception.

First, Crabb is placed in the care of the childless pastor family Pendrake. However , he quickly escapes the “Christian-loving” care of the preacher's provocative wife, Mrs. Pendrake (played by Faye Dunaway ), who secretly satisfies her sexual desires in strange beds. Crabb is then the agents of the quack Mr. Merriweather, pulling over land and the settlers a home-brewed mixture palmed off with deceptive methods as a miracle cure until the dizziness flies up and the self-proclaimed healer with his young companion of an outraged vigilantes tarred and feathered is. It turns out that among the leaders of the angry crowd is Crabb's sister Caroline, who now runs a farm and has appropriated a resolute "male" creature. She takes her brother in and teaches him to shoot. Crabb discovers his talent (in terms of speed and accuracy) in handling the revolver . Consequently, he tries his hand at being a gunslinger , where he gets to know the infamous "Wild Bill" Hickok . Faced with an actual shootout in which Hickok shoots a rival in a saloon , Crabb decides to live a "decent" life, terrified of the potential ramifications of such a career. He marries Olga, an unassuming Swedish immigrant with a simple mind, and becomes a businessman. But even in this attempt to lead a bourgeois life, he fails because the company goes bankrupt as a result of the fraudulent machinations of his partner . Shortly after this collapse, he met for the first time the leading army officer George Armstrong Custer (played by Richard Mulligan ), who advised him to seek his fortune further west.

Crabb between cultures

Together with his wife and his leftover belongings, Crabb sets off on the journey. On the way, Olga is kidnapped after an attack by Indians. In search of her, he comes into contact with the Cheyennes, his "grandfather" Old Lodge Skins and his former friends. He spends a certain amount of time with them, but then joins the army under General Custer as a "donkey driver" and scout in the hope of finding his wife again sooner.

When he witnessed a brutal massacre by the US cavalry of Cheyenne Indians, in which he witnessed the death of Shadow that comes inside (who once picked him up and brought him to the Cheyennes), but at the same time also to the savior of his daughter Sunshine who gives birth to a child in a hiding place during the massacre, he initially stays with the human beings again . The widowed Sunshine is now his wife. The tribe moves with various other groups of prairie Indians to a winter camp on the Washita River, the area of ​​which has been granted to them by the US government as a safe haven forever ("as long as grass grows, wind blows and the sky is blue") . Here, by chance, he comes across his former wife Olga again, who of all people has been accepted into his tipi by his debtor Younger Bear and has developed into a fury that dominates her “new” husband . In view of this development, he does not reveal himself to her.

Due to the shortage of men after the losses of the tribe through the Indian wars, Crabb felt compelled to mate her three sisters at the request of his Indian wife, as his "grandfather", the now blind Old Lodge Skins, predicted based on a prophetic dream has been. However, the family happiness in the circle of his tribe is again short-lived. During the massacre on the Washita River by General Custer's 7th Cavalry , most of the camp's residents, including Sunshine and her newborn child, are murdered. Crabb can only get the old blind chief to safety.

Crabb then returns to the army with the determination to take revenge on General Custer for the murder of his Indian wife. When attempting to murder Custer during the evening toilet, however, he fails miserably. Custer humiliates him by making him look ridiculous because he doesn't even want to have him executed. In the face of this defamation, Crabb becomes a drunkard . At this stage, at the lowest point of his existence, he meets "Wild Bill" Hickok again and witnesses how he is murdered in an ambush by a young man whose family Hickok was once a victim. When he delivers Hickok's last message to a whore in the local brothel , it turns out that the prostitute in question is Mrs. Pendrake, who is now widowed and who - embarrassed - recognizes her former adoptive son .

After all these changeable and disillusioning experiences, Crabb decides to change his life again. As a trapper and hermit, he retreats into the solitude of the wilderness . The desperation over the supposed futility of his existence finally drives him close to madness . But just at this moment, shortly before the suicide, he again encounters General Custer's troops advancing against the Indians and he is more determined than ever to put an end to the responsible murderer of his Indian relatives. He succeeds one more time in hiring Custer, who thinks he has a useful helper in Crabb for the final overthrow of the Indians in the sense of a self-contradicting advisor.

At the Battle of Little Big Horn , Crabb is delighted to see the final Native American victory and the inglorious end of the megalomaniac general. Crabb himself is rescued by Younger Bear , who thus pays his life debt to him, and returns to the Cheyennes as the only white survivor of "Custers Last Stand".

Reviews

“Seen from the perspective of one of the participants, the interesting and ironic film tries to demythologize the American pioneering days, which were otherwise surrounded by legends, and provides illuminating insights through the dichotomy between legend and facts. A perfectly staged epic; carried by a brilliant main actor. "

- Lexicon of international film

“'Little Big Man' is a western that has it all, an anti-western, a revealing, disavowing western that holds up the mirror to one of the most important periods in US history and belies the history books that heroize that time. 'Little Big Man' is more topical than ever, in view of the ideology of absolute security, which continues to the present day and which largely originated in the settler mentality of the 18th and 19th centuries, with the well-known consequences of a politics of arrogance on a global scale. "

- Filmzentrale.com

“An overly long but never boring film that introduces a wealth of people and events, destroys many myths of the Wild West and shows the Indian Wars for what they really were: bloody carnage. (...) With its dramaturgical structure, the film cleverly escapes the danger of pathos or sentimentality. The subjectively colored memories of Crabbs, whom the Indians give the honorary name Little Big Man , are soaked with a good shot of irony and destroy such approaches in time. "

- Dieter Krusche: Reclam's film guide

Awards

Supporting Actor Chief Dan George received the Laurel Award , won awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle, and was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar in 1971 . Director Arthur Penn also received a Special Mention at the Moscow Film Festival in 1971 , where the film ran outside of the competition, while Little Big Man was awarded the French Étoile de Cristal for best foreign film (Prix International) in the same year .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Susan King: 25 titles added to National Film Registry , Los Angeles Times online, December 17, 2014, accessed December 18, 2014
  2. ↑ R. Koppolt: Hell is green. Hollywood and Vietnam ; Contribution in cinema and war - On the fascination of a deadly genre , Arnoldshainer Film Discussions Vol. 6, Frankfurt / Main 1989, p. 48f (reference to Google Books Hollywood films and the cold war by Stefan Kaufmann)
  3. ↑ Walter Gasperi: A Different View of America: Arthur Penn ; Obituary for Arthur Penn from February 14, 2011 on kultur-online.net
  4. ↑ Little Big Man. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ^ Collaborators: Jürgen Labenski and Josef Nagel. - 13., rework. Ed. - Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-15-010676-1 , p. 421