BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS, or Bob Altman's History Lesson
Written: Aug 20 '00 (Updated Apr 30 '07)
Product Rating:
Pros: Strong performances, especially that of Burt Lancaster as Ned Buntline. Great setting and premise.
Cons: The film never develops a full dramatic head of steam.
The Bottom Line: A wonderful premise: American History and Politics become Show Business after the death of Custer. (The premise was to be substantively realized with the election of Ronald Reagan.)
macresarf1's Full Review: Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull's His...
To film Arthur Kopit's anti-Vietnam War play, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, must have seemed to atmospheric Director Robert Altman a perfect Bi-Centenniel present for the Nation. Its surrealistic use of Native Americans as a metaphor for the Viet-Cong, in a frame of dime novel myth, illustrated what is perhaps Altman's primary artistic conclusion: All American Society and its Institutions have become a form of public entertainment, at the service of commercialism.
Close on to his NASHVILLE (1975), arguably a great film, which mixed our recent political history -- assassinations and all -- in a country music setting, Altman rode out with Buffalo Bill to deconstruct the myth of American White Racial Superiority, as it had been depicted for 200 years in song, story, poems or plays; and in the last hundred years, in movies, Television, Pageants, and The Circus. Like General George Armstrong Custer, whose ghost hovers on the edge of this enterprise, Altman was riding toward the Little Big Horn of his career.
It is the summer of 1885, near what would become Cody, Wyoming, and BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS begins with the raising of Old Glory above the watch tower of a Western fort. A bugle salutes the flag, and the voice of an old soldier, the "last survivor" of the Custer Massacre, begins to mouth the oft-told tale of blood thirsty Indians terrorizing innocent settlers. We see the attack, and the credits begin to scroll "The Star ..... Buffalo Bill ..... Paul Newman" in a decorative circus motif, followed by "The Producer ..... Nate Salsbury ..... Joel Grey." Etc, etc. The band strikes up a march, and, as another voice, from a megaphone, tells the players to "do it again," we realize that we are seeing some sort of reenactment: a Wild West Show that nearly 30 years later would be photographed, for silent motion picture cameras, as one of the first Western "documentaries."
After the Civil War, the rise of popular entertainment indeed turned our History into Show Biz. Custer, Wild Bill Hickcock, Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane and, of course, William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody, among others, transformed their checkered lives into grist for tent shows and the early vaudeville stage. All these hard drinking rogues at some time or other appeared in that mix of minstrel show, sketch, and circus which eventually became the Movies, Television and, of late, "Concerts."
Cody, a son of the Middle Border, parlayed a short career as a Buffalo hunter and Indian Scout into a Wild West Show extravaganza that took him from dusty, rot gut towns in Montana to sipping Cognac with European aristocracy. He played on the sentimental American desire to have brutal, action-filled lives, and a happy ending. He performed this feat by slipping into the dead skin of General Custer to become a surrogate for the careless Red Skin Fighter, one who survived, triumphed and revenged American White Skin pride by "killing and scalping" before adoring crowds lesser and major Indian Chieftains, such as Yellow Hand and Crazy Horse, in dramatic, that is fictional, tableau.
It was an American success story.
And so the early scenes of BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS contrast bitter conversations in the Company bar between Ned Buntline (Burt Lancaster) and circus hangers-on with the hyperbolic ones of Buffalo Bill and his business partners under the Big Tent.
Buntline, a yellow journalist and local color writer, almost single-handedly created the myths of Cody, Hickock, Billy the Kid and others. Constantly enlarging the stature of some very shabby men, he wrote a long series of "dime novels," which were sold or serialized to tens of millions in America and around the World. His success spawned generations of pulp writers, from Zane Grey to most of the current residents of the New York Times (fiction) Best Seller List. They formed the World's view, and our own, of our National Character. (Adolph Hitler claimed to have formed his "brilliant" military strategy from reading German Western novels, rather than following the advice of his generals.)
Buntline is boasting how he found a handsome young buffalo skinner, named him Buffalo Bill, and promised to make him a star. For reasons not made clear in the film, Ned is persona non grata at the camp. (Cody, like most charlatans, commercial or political, is attempting to rise above his fraudulent beginnings. He has developed a taste for better whisky, opera singers, and, like his model Custer, high political office.) Buntline, however, is more sad and mournful toward his old writing subject than desirous of any reward.
In the Center Ring, almost literally, Bill Cody is taking care of show business. An Indian rider has been badly injured in the rehearsal and must be replaced by a black man. Annie Oakley (Geraldine Chaplin) has hurt her arm, and is estranged from her main target and husband, womanizing Frank Butler (John Considine).
Buntline continues to speculate for his listeners about "Bill's" growing drinking problem. He predicts, from his knowledge of Cody and The New Show Biz, that Sitting Bull, Spiritual Chief of "The Hunkapapa Sioux," titular leader in the defeat of Custer, will be taken from the reservation, where he is in "protective custody," to appear in the Wild West Show.
Sure enough, after his Eastern nephew, Ed Goodman (Harvey Keitel), has found him a new Opera Star, after he has given directions to his top rider Buck Taylor (Fred N. Larsen), Bill greets tiny, wizened Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) and his interpreter, Gigantic William Sampson (Will Halsey). At first, until straightened out by the Commander of the Army detail (Denver Pyle), Cody and others confuse the two Native Americans.
The rest of the film is a contest of wills -- Cody and his managers against the pair -- which Sitting Bull wins at every turn. Sitting Bull accepts a trick pony and many supplies for his people, but he refuses to do an act. He simply rides to the center of the arena in preliminary shows to display to the Public the spiritual power which massacred General Custer and a company of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry. He dreams of meeting and demonstrating this power to newly elected President Grover Cleveland. Cody and his producer Nate Salsbury are pleased neither with these ideas nor the diminutive Chieftain's appearance. He does not look his part as a ferocious villain.
[Cody is said to have invented the tradional "Indian war whoop," having his actors clap their hands over their mouths so that the yells would be heard above the noise of all the blank pistol and rifle fire . . . and the calliope]
Buntline states the conflict succinctly:
"Injuns gear their lives to dreams. And once an Injun dreams . . . he'll wait till he dies for it to come true. White men, they're different. They dream 'cause that's the only time things go their way."
Sitting Bull's dream comes true when President Cleveland (Pat McCormick) arrives on his honeymoon one October evening with his bride (Shelley Duvall). [Surprisingly, the Clintonesque scandal that sweated this romantic relationship for a dozen years is not touched upon.] The Old Chief delivers his message in frighteningly symbolic form (which few present understand), and then he seems resigned to the White Man's desire for his death, which comes shortly as his trick pony dances to the gunfire bringing his master down.
Having dealt through flunkies earlier with Buntline, Cody is led by Sitting Bill's death into a confrontation with his former friend and benefactor, the old dime novelist. The latter observes that the President of the United States has slept in the bed of the drunken, lying, womanizing Cody. "Buffalo Bill," he shouts. "It's been the thrill of my life to have invented ya!"
The Chieftain's death and the traumatic departure of Buntline seem to unhinge Cody, and he is never the same again. Now he lives only in the spotlight.
Cody casts the more suitable giant interpreter, Sampson, to play Sitting Bull, and pays him to be symbolically scalped at every performance of The Wild West Show.
I wish I might tell you that BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS is a really good movie, but it is not. After a fascinating start, full of odd Altman (and historical) characters, it runs down. All the Americana, all the Show Business, all the allegorical hints about Cody, even Richard Nixon and the rise of the celebrity politician (presciently anticipating Ronald Reagan) are not nurtured into their full dramatic flower.
The film seems anti-climactic.
The Public thought so, too. The Critics joined the Crowd. BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS was nearly a financial massacre for Altman. It was over 15 years before he regained the momentum he achieved from NASHVILLE to make a come back in THE PLAYER (1992) and SHORT CUTS (1993). Like Buffalo Bill Cody, Altman rose from the ashes to slay his enemies. He is still going strong.
I recommend the picture for its premise, and for its first half, a film by one of our few authentic living auteurs . . . but I'm reluctant to praise it in its entirety.
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UPDATE: August 1, 2002 -- When I wrote this review, eldest son G. W. Bush's political future was his Daddy's pipe dream. Today, it becomes increasingly apparent that President George W. Bush and his counterfeit "Texas George" persona are the dangerous culmination of Altman's PR and show biz theory of American History.
UPDATE: April 30, 2007: Robert Altman is gone, but his celebrity theory of American leadership continues to strengthen. Actor, former Senator, Fred Thompson is considering an entrance into the Republican Presidential race. The very mention of his name, certainly the flash of his face, seen regularly on TV's Law and Order, gives him instant standing in the national polls. We shall have to see how this most recent show biz political figure fares.
From director Robert Altman (M*A*S*H, The Player) comes an uproarious, high-spirited look at Buffalo Bill Cody, the legendary Western adventurer. In t...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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