Which 1970 Western directed by Arthur Penn stars Dustin Hoffman as Jack Crabb?

Which 1970 Western directed by Arthur Penn stars Dustin Hoffman as Jack Crabb? Little Big Man. The film adapts Thomas Berger’s 1964 novel and presents the long, improbable life of Jack Crabb, a white man raised by the Cheyenne who moves repeatedly between Native and settler worlds.

Dustin Hoffman plays Crabb at several ages, with makeup and performance carrying the character from childhood into extreme old age. Chief Dan George plays Old Lodge Skins, while Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam and Richard Mulligan fill out the film’s shifting cast of settlers, soldiers and eccentrics. Arthur Penn’s direction blends comedy, adventure, tragedy and anti-war satire.

Little Big Man is a revisionist Western rather than a conventional frontier adventure. It challenges heroic portrayals of the U.S. Cavalry, especially through its treatment of George Armstrong Custer and the violence inflicted on Native communities. Its Vietnam-era perspective is one reason the film is often discussed alongside other skeptical, anti-establishment American movies of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A common mix-up is treating Jack Crabb as a documented historical figure. He is fictional, and the film’s tall-tale structure deliberately combines invented episodes with real people and events.