Little Big Man Review
Little Big Man was one of a group of early 1970s Westerns that found a precedent for the atrocities of the Vietnam War in the history of white westward expansion at the expense of Native Americans. In the process, Arthur_Penn and screenwriter Calder_Willingham take apart the Western itself, sending up myths of white "civilization" and its proper violence while lending a humorous and poignant slant to the mythic "noble savages" -- not to mention casting actual Native American actors. Primed for Western iconoclasm by an ever more vigorous antiwar movement and counterculture, audiences turned Little Big Man into a surprise hit; Chief Dan George garnered a New York Film Critics Circle prize and an Oscar nomination for his performance. One of the most successful of the period's revisionist Westerns, Little Big Man stands as a timely and wittily caustic indictment of western myths and the contemporary legacy of manifest destiny. Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
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