Do audiences ever ask for a History Lesson? Robert Altman gives them a smart, if diffuse, image of America as a showbiz invention, commercialized and packaged. Paul Newman is the prepackaged white hero surrounded by a jolly circus; Buffalo Bill’s trick seems to be to get his colleagues, the dispossessed minorities and especially the vanquished Native Americans to cooperate with his self-aggrandizing fantasy. One of Altman’s better scattershot ensembles sketches an amusingly hollow Buffalo Bill in Paul Newman, but the director’s style keeps emotional involvement at arm’s length… make that telephoto lens’ length.
Buffalo Bill and the Indians
Region B Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1976 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 124, 105 min. / Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson / Street Date December 14, 2020 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99
Starring: Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Burt Lancaster, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel, Will Sampson, Allan F. Nicholls, Geraldine Chaplin, John Considine,...
Buffalo Bill and the Indians
Region B Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1976 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 124, 105 min. / Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson / Street Date December 14, 2020 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99
Starring: Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Burt Lancaster, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel, Will Sampson, Allan F. Nicholls, Geraldine Chaplin, John Considine,...
- 12/15/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Director: Robert Altman Writers: Arthur Kopit (play Indians), Alan Rudolph (screenplay), Robert Altman (screenplay) Starring: Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel, Allan F. Nicholls, Geraldine Chaplin, John Considine, Robert DoQui, Denver Pyle, Frank Kaquitts, Will Sampson, Pat McCormick, Shelley Duvall, Burt Lancaster Thanks to Kino Lorber Studio Classics, there’s now an excuse to revisit a film you […]...
- 2/4/2015
- by Linc Leifeste
- SmellsLikeScreenSpirit
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson
Written by Alan Rudolph and Robert Altman
Directed by Robert Altman
USA, 1976
The popularity of the Western, at one point America’s reigning genre champion, was starting to wane considerably by the mid-1960s and well into the 1970s. In part to keep the form alive, and in part to examine just want made this type of film what it once was and had now become, many filmmakers, Sam Peckinpah most notably, began to approach Westerns through a self-consciously analytical lens. These were Westerns that were, in one way or another, about Westerns themselves: what made them work, what their key tropes were, how could their conventions be subverted or updated, and how could this old-fashioned genre be made modern?
Director Robert Altman, no stranger to subverting conventions and thwarting expectations, had already tackled this in 1971, with McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
Written by Alan Rudolph and Robert Altman
Directed by Robert Altman
USA, 1976
The popularity of the Western, at one point America’s reigning genre champion, was starting to wane considerably by the mid-1960s and well into the 1970s. In part to keep the form alive, and in part to examine just want made this type of film what it once was and had now become, many filmmakers, Sam Peckinpah most notably, began to approach Westerns through a self-consciously analytical lens. These were Westerns that were, in one way or another, about Westerns themselves: what made them work, what their key tropes were, how could their conventions be subverted or updated, and how could this old-fashioned genre be made modern?
Director Robert Altman, no stranger to subverting conventions and thwarting expectations, had already tackled this in 1971, with McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
- 12/16/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
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