Wednesday, May 23, 2018

BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS, OR SITTING BULL’S HISTORY LESSON (1976) **


Buffalo Bill’s (Paul Newman) Wild West show is a big hit.  In what has got to be the Old West version of a casting coup, Bill lands none other than Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) as the show’s latest attraction.  Sitting Bull soon proves to be more trouble than he’s worth.  He begins acting like a total diva, making lofty demands and generally causing trouble for the show.  It’s then up to Bill to placate his new star while retaining his artistic vision for the show (even if it differs from historical fact).

Like Robert Altman’s Nashville, The Player, and A Prairie Home Companion, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History is a picture about the daily life of show biz folk and their various struggles.  It has all the overlapping dialogue, long tracking shots, and colorful characters you’d expect from an Altman picture.  It’s overlong, patchy, and uneven, but there are moments when you see can what he was going for. 

The scenes of Buffalo Bill trying to outwit Sitting Bull and his ever-increasing list of demands play out just fine.  Somewhere along the way, the film starts going around in circles.  Once the wheels start falling off in the second act, it slowly becomes a rambling endurance test.  The loose narrative becomes almost nonexistent as it enters the final act.  

Newman is good as the crotchety Bill.  The film is at its best when he’s front and center being wily and flashing his trademark smile, but even he can’t save the slow-moving narrative.  Harvey Keitel and Kevin McCarthy also get a few laughs as members of Bill’s company.  Burt Lancaster has a couple of nice moments too as Bill’s publicist, who mostly sits on the sidelines commenting on the action.

It’s Newman who gets the best line of the movie when he says, “The last thing a man wants to do is the last thing he does.”

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