Review #1,275: 'Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson' (1976)

Depending on which scholar of Robert Altman's sizeable body of work you read, Buffalo Bill and The Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson represents either the end of the auteur's successful early career, during which he made the likes of M.A.S.H., McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye and Nashville, or the first in his line of smaller, 'misunderstood' movies that produced the likes of 3 Women, Quintet and HealtH. Whatever your viewpoint, Buffalo Bill certainly stands out as one of the black sheep of his filmography; a film ultimately made in the wrong place at the wrong time. Altman, always the satirical magician, was no doubt fully aware that debunking a famous American myth now so dangerously taken as truth during the country's bicentennial celebrations wouldn't go down particularly well with an audience feeling particularly patriotic, and would likely hit a nerve.

Sadly for Altman, few nerves would be reached as audiences stayed away in droves. It was his first major flop, and was hardly helped by such an outrageous title that contained the term 'History Lesson'. Even Paul Newman, a bankable Hollywood star, couldn't help matters, and the film still hasn't been offered the chance of re-discovery and re-evaluation it certainly deserves. Just like the brilliant McCabe & Mrs. Miller turned the western myth into the founding of American capitalism, Buffalo Bill is another revisionist western, focusing on how the hard men of the Wild West with blood on their hands were turned into folk heroes, battling the feral, bloodthirsty natives and winning the war for the New World. The sideshow announcer's voice blares over the opening credits, as Altman declares his awareness of his own role in myth-making, and that of the film itself. We are in Buffalo Bill's Wild West, a hugely popular attraction that re-enacted famous stories from recent American 'history', and offered the audience the chance to see one of its most famous figures, Buffalo Bill Cody himself.

Based on the controversial play Indians by Arthur Kopit, Altman uses the side-show to employ his most famous traits. There's a large ensemble cast featuring the likes of Geraldine Chaplin, Joel Grey, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel and Robert DoQui, overlapping dialogue, long zooms, and dialogue laced with satirical bite. Bill is portrayed as a bit of a lout, dispensing of opera singer bed-mates as soon as a new one arrives, employing a wig to hide his advancing years, and outright lying about his skills with a gun. The arrival of Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) holds up a mirror to his boasts, and that of America's bloodstained history. Newman is great, and Bill's apparent cartoonishness seems fitting with the movie's hints that he may in fact be a complete fabrication conjured up by the motor-mouthed Ned Buntline (Burt Lancaster), who frequents the nearby bars boasting of his role in the founding of the country. It's confused and often flounders under the weight of its own ambition, but nevertheless this is always fascinating stuff. It isn't difficult to see why Buffalo Bill and the Indians turned off audiences back in 1976, but its exploration of the dangers of myth-making and twisting the truth are more relevant than ever in these times of social media and 'fake news'.


Directed by: Robert Altman
Starring: Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel, Geraldine Chaplin, John Considine, Frank Kaquitts, Will Sampson, Burt Lancaster
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #230: 'Nashville' (1975)

Films with multiple storylines and an ensemble cast are commonplace nowadays, but it all stems, really, from this film - Robert Altman's formidable Nashville. Sure, there were films before that handled large casts before, but never before had a film so successfully told an overlying story using so many characters, and have their lives so delicately intertwined. These characters have full histories and complex natures, yet they are only glimpsed and suggested in short scenes that say more in two or three minutes than most films can manage in a feature length running time.

The film takes place over the course of five days in Nashville, Tennessee, and focuses around the minor and major players in the music business, and the hangers on that seem to always be around. The key characters are Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), a spangly-suited veteran singer with political ambitions, Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), a mentally unstable country music darling returning to her home town, Tom Frank (Keith Carradine), a member of a folk group trio who is trying to make it on his own and having as many woman as he can along the way, Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin), a white gospel singer who is being pursued by Tom, and Del Reese (Ned Beatty), Linnea's manager husband, who seems to be oblivious to the strain on his marriage. All their lives are interconnected and are usually linked by an incident or a set-piece.

The first scene of the film sees the campaign van for Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker setting off for a tour around Nashville, and appears throughout the film. The film even climaxes at a political rally for Walker, with Hamilton and Barbara Jean both appearing on stage, and the scene brings together nearly all of the films' characters. Although I didn't get from the film that it is necessarily making any kind of political statement, it was made soon after the Watergate scandal, and was released to an America that was looking for answers. I think Nashville is making both a warm and cynical statement about the optimism and the arrogance of America, and also the confusion and the uncertainty that came with the 1970's.

Such is the beauty of Nashville. I couldn't sum up what it was about in one sentence, and couldn't describe a clear aim or message it was trying to deliver. It is a number of things, and touches a number of emotions. The real greatness is in its small moments, such as talentless and desperate aspiring country singer Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) singing to a room full of men, and then being told that she was brought there to strip; the cold detachment that Tom deals with Linnea when she reveals she can't stay any longer; the various characters who all think that Tom is singing to them in a crowded bar, as he gazes over them all to the back of the room; or the uncomfortable scene in which Barbara Jean keeps talking to an uneasy crowd rather than singing a song, as it becomes clear that she is truly losing her mind.

Nashville is one of the key films of the 1970's, and one of the finest examples of the American New Wave that emerged in that time, and produced some of the finest films to ever come out of the country. Although Altman had been around for a while at that time (he had already done the brilliant MASH (1970) and the thoroughly underrated revisionist western classic McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)), this is the film where he truly found his forte. It's been imitated endlessly, but never has a film managed to do so much with so many different stories. An absolute great, and one of the finest American films ever made.


Directed by: Robert Altman
Starring: Ned Beatty, Henry Gibson, Ronee Blakley, Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Murphy, Gwen Welles, Scott Glenn
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie