Cheap Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (DVD) (Robert Altman) Price

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Customer Reviews of Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson

"Truth is Whatever Gets the Most Applause!"
Altman has made some very good movies, and some very bad ones, often right next to each other. Viewing this film right after the highs of "Nashville" will surely lead to a serious Altman letdown. Historically, of course, coming out during the Bicentennial and right after that great film, expectations that were very high were mostly dashed, and this film quickly joined other Altman stinkers in the "not good" Altman film repository, right next to "H.E.A.L.T.H." <
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>But time has been very kind to this Altman sleeper. I found Newman's performance exhilarating and comic, and Joel Grey hilarious and knowing. Like many of Altman's films, this one is about the mythmaking of contemporary pop history, and the "necessary illusions" required by the audience to buy into and celebrate these myths. Although the particular target here is western pop history, Altman's aims are much broader: the legacy of Native America abuse, the need of the audience to create and celebrate "hero myths," and the schematic critique of star-worshipping history, written by the "winners." Frank Kaquitts plays the critical role of truth-teller, and is understated and very funny as Sitting Bull, who joins Buffalo Bill's troupe with his interpreter, attempting to add some reality to Cody's wildly distorted (and wildly popular) western shows. <
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>While the script of Altman and Alan Rudolph has some typical Altman flaws, fat, and excess, the benefit of time and careful reflection has served this little gem well.

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Pretty bad
So... it's the bicentennial year, you're Robert Altman and you want to make a movie about the building of a show business legend. Hey, I watched the four-minute 1976 Making Of featurette on this disk and that's what Paul Newman seemed to think they were doing in BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS. What the heck - his guess is as good as any, and I haven't got a better way of explaining what exactly is going on here. <
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> We meet Buffalo Bill Cody when one of his flunkies is filling the schooner of whiskey he consumes during the day - he's cut his consumption to one drink a day, you see, so he pours a fifth of booze into a big glass and gnaws on it for the duration. Get it? Funny, funny stuff that. Probably accurate, too, as such things are reckoned. Not so sure about the string of pretty opera singers he goes through. And the history books must have got wrong the universally reported friendship between Cody and Sitting Bull. Here Cody doesn't even bother to hide his disdain for the chief. You see, Sitting Bull had a dream he'd meet President Grover Cleveland (Pat McCormick) who'll turn his sizable back on him the first and only chance he gets. Sitting Bull doesn't tell us of his dreams, of course. He speaks through his imposing translator William Halsey (Will Sampson.) Halsy has the best line in the movie, and the most accurate critique of Altman's treatment of his subject. "Sitting Bull," Halsey says at one point, "says that history is nothing more than disrespect for the dead." <
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> Well, Burt Lancaster is entertaining as legend maker Ned Buntline, who for some unexplained reason spends the movie in a nearby saloon, shunned by Cody until late in the last act. Maybe being segregated from the big movie saved him. Besides Lancaster there ain't much here to like. For the most part BUFFALO BILL is slow, aimless, plotless, and not much fun. <
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A History Lesson, Of Sorts.
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>I too first saw this film in a theatre in 1976 after its release; I was with a few other people and to this day none of them probably care for this movie. <
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>I read a lot on the west and have several books about Buffalo Bill Cody, so I wanted to see what Mr. Altman had done with this movie. I can not argue with anyone who doesn't care for this picture, would not try to couch my review so that they would. <
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>Though I realize that the film doesn't give a total picture of what was going on at this time in the still unsettled west it does have a quality of those times to it. Buffalo Bill here is not the young, agile Army Indian Scout of old, nor the brazen hero awarded the Medal of Honor, he has been tempered both by age and the bottle; but let no one doubt that he in fact had done many things that were historical. He was notable and respected in his time, and more over he was a capable western man and scout. Later he was bankrupt not only in money but also in spirit; and his final show days with the 101 Wild West show are pitiful to this day. <
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>One needs to remember, too, that shortly after Sitting Bull left Wild Bill's show, he was savagely murdered by his own Indian Police tribesmen at Pine Ridge Reservation. Though the movie doesn't bring this out, and that was not never its intent, the 'west' was yet an unsettled area in some places, with several places being very dangerous. There are some western writers who claim the Apache were still making raids out of the Sierre Madre into the 1930s. <
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>But men like Buffalo Bill and Frederick Remington who realized not only that the western times were changing, saw their 'west' disappearing, being replaced by something alien, with which they were totally unfamiliar. Each man attempted in his own way to keep "their" west alive in order that later people could visually see and understand it as they had experienced it. Today both men have come in for more than their share of disrespect. In the several college history of art courses I took, not a single painting of our American west was ever to be found in either text book or on mid-term exam. <
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>Some of the flux existing in these times has been captured brillantly on film by Mr Altman, whether that was his intent or not. Even Burt Lancaster's character, Ned Buntline, is at odds & ends and seems to be very much adrift in that new west that is replacing the old west. Even his blue G.A.R. uniform of Civil War days harkens back to a more familiar time, and as he rides off for the final time he doesn't have a clue where he is going. <
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>I treasure this movie and watch it not only for its surrealism, symbolism, and realism, but because it does attempt to show the physical being and personalities of the Wild West Show itself. I'm old enough to have heard and read of what this show looked like, but thanks to Altman's sets I can more plainly realize it, and realize it in blazing color. <
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>I think and have always thought that this is a very worthwhile movie. <
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