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Staring: Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel, Allan F. Nicholls
Director: Robert Altman
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Product Details
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Buffalo
EAN: 9780792849544
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 079284954X
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2001-05-08
Running Time: 123
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: 1976-06-24

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Editorial Review
Description
From director Robert Altman (M*A*S*H, The Player) comes an uproarious, high-spirited look at "Buffalo Bill" Cody, the legendary Western adventurer. With a fine cast that includes Paul Newman, Harvey Keitel, Burt Lancaster, Joel Grey and Geraldine Chaplin, Buffalo Bill and the Indians is a hilarious yet poignant comedy that shows the Old West as you've never seen it before! Although Buffalo Bill (Newman) has fought Indians and Civil War battles, nothing can prepare him for his newest challenge: show business! His "Wild West Show" is hugely popular, but when he signs a former enemy, Sioux Chief Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts), for a featured role, a hysterical clash of cultures reverberates far beyond the boundaries of their sprawling outdoor theater. And the complications only multiply when the troupe discovers it must put on a special command performancefor none other than the President of the United States!

Amazon.com
Robert Altman was often ahead of his time--once at the cost of being behind himself. Buffalo Bill and the Indians, a snorting exposé of the U.S. predilection for buying into heroic myths, opened on July 4, 1976. Clearly the film was positioned as the ultimate bicentennial event, Altman-style. But Altman had already delivered that a year earlier: the splendiferous, deeply disenchanted yet exhilarating Nashville. Both Nashville and Buffalo Bill are films about America-as-show business, hucksterism, and the rare miracle of performance. But everything Altman got so thrillingly right in Nashville, which teems with life and mystery and widescreen dynamism, came out flatfooted and obvious in Buffalo Bill, a cramped, smirky inside joke that ends up being on the joker.

The setting is the base camp for Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, where the blustering Indian fighter of legend is gearing up for his latest national tour. Apart from sharpshooter Annie Oakley (Geraldine Chaplin) and her great friend, the Sioux chieftain Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts), the show is populated by phonies and opportunists. Biggest phony of all is Cody (Paul Newman), whose fame has been based more on the penny-dreadful scribblings of Ned Buntline (Burt Lancaster) than on any real accomplishments; even his long blond tresses are fake. Altman and cowriter Alan Rudolph (working from a play by Arthur Kopit) thump their insights about the Establishment's feet of clay as if they were breaking-news bulletins instead of countercultural clichés. Only the occasional ineffably mysterious Altman zoom shot offers relief. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

YOU CAN DO BETTER, ALTMAN-WISE . . ., 2007-04-20
When Altman is good he's great. Like in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Shortcuts, The Player and, oh yes, MASH. The Amazon review for BB et al should be read before ordering this. Like, flat-footed and obvious, I think they say. Beyond Altman, an akin movie of this time would be Little Big Man, which is sensational, not stupid.

Intriguing Idea But A Bit Shallow, 2006-12-01
Paul Newman stars as Buffalo Bill, the showman of the wild west, with his circus act of performers. Robert Altman is famous for movings that expose how easily people fall for myths and stories, and this is no exception. Bill and his crew are all larger than life, believing in the stories written about themselves. They decide to put Geronimo into their act, thinking that they can stir up their audience into a blood lust against the "evil Indians".

To their surprise, people actually respect the native Americans, and even the president comes out to meet Geronimo for himself. In the end it's only Geronimo that speaks honestly, and he is ignored. He leaves the white men to their problems.

There are a number of famous actors and actresses here - Joel Grey, Harvey Keitel, Burt Lancaster, Geraldine Chaplin. Undoubtedly all signed on to make a movie that had social significance, especially with it coming out in 1976 - America's 200th year of independence. However, they are in essence satiring people who in fact were "heroes" in many ways. Buffalo Bill did in fact do some impressive things in his life. By all accounts Geronimo liked him and enjoyed being with him. For many of the city slickers, these shows were their only glimpse into what the wild west was all about, even in a general portrayal.

Also, the native americans are treated as being supernatural Gods. They get across rivers that are uncrossable, they set up lodgings where they should not be able to. There isn't any relating to them as people, as a culture. I would really have liked to see more of the cross-cultural issues - the different ways in which they related to women, to minorities, to performing in public.

interesting, 2007-02-15
I was filmed in my home town and a very good friend of mine was a extra in the movie and we looked at it to see if we could pick her out. Unfortunatly we did not find her. o-well

Burying The Heart at The Wild West Show, 2009-01-24
Altman's comedies aren't always that funny. With a radiant Paul Newman, supported by Burt Lancaster's bemused Ned Buntline of the dime novel, we have a script delivering a steady drumroll of putdowns about the creation of the West. Buntline exits stage door left, deeply uncertain about the transformation of his own commodity into a newer, more spectacular, but thinner variant. Whatever resonance the film may be attempting to strike with 1880s values, Altman's film has plenty to say about 1970s liberal values. The buffoonery proceeds apace while Bill connives to con Sitting Bull to headline his Wild West Show. The Sioux lads (Sitting Bull has an interpreter, the aptly dubbed and granite-like, William Sampson)don't budge a grain of gravel in contracting to participate. They comply merely to facilitate the course of Sitting Bull's dream. The camera frequently withdraws to encompass the immensity of the eternal mountain range behind the ephemerality of the carnival. Bill is foiled. His grog-addled arrogance and vanity are no match for the sombre indigenies who stake their land claim,to no avail, before an supremely ignorant President Cleveland. The whites are the dills in Altman's bigger picture which has Bull's demise promptly trivialised when re-enacted in the pitiful stage death by his stoic interpreter.Hadn't he said not long before something like,'History is just disrespect for dead people'?

Terrific Newman Performance in Lesser Known Altman Flick, 2006-07-02
Robert Altman's expertise at framing and then exposing the three dimensions of show business, of presentation and performance, place and status, ala Nashville, Gosford Park, A Praire Home Companion, The Player, The Company and Kansas City (to name a few), gets the interesting, ironical and historical treatment here.
In Paul Newman's Buffalo Bill Cody, legend of the wild west, and extraordinary showman, Altman gives the American man of myth, then chips away at him, all while the rival and counterpart Sitting Bull grows and deepens in merely standing still. Newman's performance is terrific, his eyes never betraying the truth of his limitations, though his histriotics along with those of his minions in his large show, work very well at entertaining and maintaining. Joel Grey, Kevin McCarthy and Harvey Keitel all stand out as Newman's producing partner, press agent and flunky respectively. Their sycophancy echoes the Emperors New Clothes, and is set against Sitting Bull and his right hand man Halsey, who agree to join the wild west history show in order to tell the truth of the matter, ever stoic and unimpressed by the show.
With humor and his trademark layering of sound, dialogue and wit Altman gives us the lesson of what is real and unreal, fraudulent and true, the stuff of history books and shows, and the heart of the matters.

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