Synopsis
Jack Crabb, looking back from extreme old age, tells of his life being raised by Indians and fighting with General Custer.
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Cast
- Dustin HoffmanJack Crabb
- Faye DunawayMrs. Louise Pendrake
- Chief Dan GeorgeOld Lodge Skins
- Martin BalsamMr. Merriweather
- Richard MulliganGen. George Armstrong Custer
- Jeff CoreyWild Bill Hickok
- Aimée EcclesSunshine
- William HickeyHistorian
- Alan OppenheimerMajor
- Lou CutellDeacon
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Sun-Times
Arthur Penn's Little Big Man is an endlessly entertaining attempt to spin an epic in the form of a yarn. - 100
TV Guide Magazine
Hoffman is uncharacteristically charming in a demanding role; the supporting cast is uniformly excellent, particularly Chief Dan George as a befuddled patriarch who takes the supernatural as a matter of course. - 90
Time
It also accomplishes that rarest achievement, the breathing of life into an ossified art form. The '70s has its first great epic. - 70
Variety
Little Big Man is a sort of vaudeville show, framed in fictional biography, loaded with sketches of varying degrees of serious and burlesque humor, and climaxed by the Indian victory over Gen George A. Custer at Little Big Horn in 1876. - 60
Chicago Reader
The dual point of view is used effectively, though it's less valid as social criticism (where Penn's observations tend toward facile revisionism) than as an index of the uncertainty that characterizes most of Penn's heroes. - 60
Empire
Episodic western with a great performance from Hoffman. - 30
The New York Times
The film tries to cover too much ground, even though Calder Willingham's script eliminates or telescopes events and characters from the Berger novel.
