A great script by Calder Willingham (from Thomas Berger novel), deceptively playful in turn becomes an entirely revisionist western - the Indians are the ones with the moral code and civilisation, the whites are the brute occupiers - the end is literally a reversal of all those westerns where the cavalry comes to the rescue - we're actually willing the cavalry to be massacred, particularly loony General Custer (Richard Mulligan). No doubt Vietnam parallels are there too.
Dustin Hoffman is the 121 year old survivor of this battle, Chief Dan George his 'grandfather' ('Yes, I have heard of the black white man'). With Martin Balsam, Faye Dunaway, Jeff Corey (Wild Bill), Aimee Eccles (Sunshine), Kelly Jean Peters (Olga), Robert Little Star, Cal Bellini, William Hickey.
Well photographed by Harry Stradling Jr and edited by Dede Allen, her third collaboration with Penn. It was her idea to use the chirpy band music over the Washita River massacre, and then to pull the sound out at the end - was this the first time it had been done? It's extremely powerful. I also noticed where Hoffman's wife's laugh turns seamlessly into sobs as their property is repossessed. (Richard Marks is the associate editor, Stephen Rotter (Garp) the assistant.)
The music - by John Hammond - sounds like it's a leftover from the folk-blues of Penn's previous film Alice's Restaurant.
Penn reported in the Television Academy interview that there was some inherited opposition from the studio to making this film as it showed the American Indians in a positive light. They kept pitching it at a much higher budget than it needed in the hope it would be turned down. Accordingly on completion it was three million dollars under budget! Despite this, it was a flop.
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