The Graduate Meets Bonnie and Clyde

Literally.

The two landmark films of 1967 were “Bonnie and Clyde” (for violence) and “The Graduate” (for sex) . One year later came the new ratings code (“R” and “X”), and screen freedom was here.

Three years later, key participants of “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate” joined forces to open the 70’s with “Little Big Man” of 1970. From “Bonnie and Clyde” came director Arthur Penn (now a highly respected auteur filmmaker) and Bonnie herself, Faye Dunaway. From “The Graduate” came its iconic little big star, Dustin Hoffman, and screenwriter Calder Willingham (who shared a script credit on “The Graduate” with Buck Henry, who is said to have been the true writer of the script.)

Given the role of the director in this period, “Little Big Man” perhaps seems more like “Bonnie and Clyde” than “The Graduate”: Penn again takes us back in time with beautiful and lyric photography of flat rural open spaces, as he did in “Bonnie,” and Faye Dunaway is, as she was as Bonnie Parker, rather heavily lascivious in her screen incarnation (funny: after this highly sexed role and its matched-pair with Bonnie, Dunaway became a more chilly, tremulous and regal type from “Chinatown” on.) Penn even has his top editor from “Bonnie,” Dede Allen, to give “Little Big Man” the requisite jagged jolts of action as in the earlier film.

But the “Bonnie and Clyde” aura can’t quite overcome Dustin Hoffman’s star power. Benjamin Braddock is alive and well in “Little Big Man,” though here Ben talks with a cracker-barrel country accent that doesn’t quite match up with Benjamin’s flat nasal tones. (Hoffman’s deadpan is the same.)

“Little Big Man” came into 1970 as a “prestige picture.” Hoffman had both “The Graduate” and “Midnight Cowboy” behind him (as well as a misfire with the equally iconic Mia Farrow called “John and Mary.”) Penn had “Bonnie and Clyde” (with the quirky but very countercultural “Alice’s Restaurant” right after that to earn Penn his 60’s bona fides.) Audiences EXPECTED an important picture in “Little Big Man,” and one critic gave them solace: “The first great movie of the ‘70’s,” he wrote. This led in all print ads of “Little Big Man.”

Funny thing: given what we know of the 70’s now, “Little Big Man” doesn’t seem to have quite entered the pantheon of greats from that fabulous decade. Hard to say why; I would suggest that the film is ultimately a bit too episodic (most of the characters don’t get long enough to register) and too mannered, to have scored in a big way.

Oscar didn’t give it much notice. “Patton” won Best Picture and George C. Scott won Best Actor. “Little Big Man” wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture (“Love Story” WAS!) Hoffman wasn’t nominated for Best Actor (despite doing parts of “Little Big Man” in a mass of plastic make-up as a 121-year old man!)“MASH” was the stunner of 1970 in terms of sex and blood and hip comedy.

The debuting Indian actor Chief Dan George seemed to be a lock for the Best Supporting Actor…but John Mills in Lean’s “Ryan’s Daughter” stole it right out from under him (Mills played a deaf-mute; the Academy always goes for affliction.)

Oscar’s rejection of “Little Big Man” suggests, perhaps, some residual backlash against New Hollywood by Old Hollywood. Take that, Arthur Penn! (“Graduate” director Mike Nichols busted out with “Catch-22” in 1970, as well; “MASH” stole its anti-war black comedy thunder.)

It’s also quite possible that the film outraged Hollywood’s Old Guard with its ultimate message: Custer was a madman jerk who deserved to get slaughtered by those noble Indians. (Marlon Brando’s rejection of “The Godfather” Oscar over Hollywood’s treatment of Indians seemed a bit “off” two years after this movie.)

“Little Big Man” presages “Dances With Wolves” in its sympathetic look at American Indian culture through the eyes of a white protagonist. But “Little Big Man” also has other places to take its central character: into the home of a mean old religious fanatic and his sex-crazed young wife (Dunaway); onto the road with a snake oil salesman who is losing one body part at a time to vengeful people in every town that “makes him” (Martin Balsam); into a showdown of sorts with Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey), and so on.

I don’t know; perhaps there was too much going on. The sexy Dunaway and the very funny Balsam simply don’t get enough screen time (they disappear and reappear in new guises as the movie goes along, and you find yourself missing them when they go away.) Matters eventually flatten out to a focus on the relationship between Hoffman and the regal but wry Chief Dan George (“Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t.)





Still, “Little Big Man” is a fine relic of a new decade aborning: the seventies. This is a movie that intended to MEAN something, and that set out to take a more realistic look at violence and a more frank look at sex (the scene in which Hoffman moves among three Indian widows and tries to impregnate each of them was a landmark little sex scene, funny and bizarre and sexy at the same time; Chief Dan George asks about Hoffman’s first wife, “Does she give you pleasure when you mount her?”)

“The first great movie of the 70’s?” Not necessarily the first. “MASH” and “Patton” got there first. Not necessarily even great…not with “The Godfather” and “Chinatown” and “Jaws” on the way.

Still, a memorable movie, and an important one. When I look at “Little Big Man” today, I see a movie of two minds: it looked to launch a whole new decade of American life and film, and now it seems like a quaint throwback to the kind of thinking man’s epic with radical chic that they don’t much make anymore.