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| Joel Grey, Geraldine Chaplin, and Paul Newman in Buffalo Bill and the Indians |
Cast: Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel, Burt Lancaster, Allan F. Nicholls, Geraldine Chaplin, John Considine, Will Sampson, Frank Kaquitts, Robert DoQui, Mike Kaplan, Burt Remsen, Bonnie Leaders, Noelle Rogers, Evelyn Lear, Denver Pyle, Pat McCormick, Shelley Duvall. Screenplay: Alan Rudolph, Robert Altman, suggested by a play by Arthur Kopit. Cinematography: Paul Lohmann. Production design: Anthony Masters. Film editing: Peter Appleton, Dennis M. Hill. Music: Richard Baskin.
"Nostalgia ain't what it used to be," says Buffalo Bill (Paul Newman) in Robert Altman's deconstruction of the Wild West myth that Bill Cody, with the help of the novelist Ned Buntline (Burt Lancaster), had created. Buffalo Bill and the Indians premiered in the bicentennial year of 1976 and was poorly received by both critics and audiences, though probably not because of any offenses to patriotism. It's overlong and unfocused, relying more on Newman's charisma than on any attempt at giving the character depth and substance. It's no revelation that the man who made the myth of the Wild West was a racist and an egomaniac. There are amusing moments: Joel Grey delivers the malapropisms of Nate Salisbury, the producer of Bill's show, with sly finesse, and Geraldine Chaplin and John Considine spar nicely as Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. Bill's supposed infatuation with opera singers lets Evelyn Lear, as a soprano called Nina Cavallini, beautifully sing "The Last Rose of Summer" in Italian. But the movie has nowhere to go. If Sitting Bull does teach Buffalo Bill a history lesson, as the subtitle suggests, it doesn't seem to have any effect.