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Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)

Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson poster
Directed by
Robert Altman
Genre
comedy film, Western film, parody film
Country
United States
Runtime
2h 08m
Rated
PG
Rating
5.5 of 10 from 110 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb

How it feels

The film shows Buffalo Bill running a wild west show and rewriting history to make himself a hero. It exposes the lies behind the myth of the American frontier by contrasting his performance with the real story of Sitting Bull.

satiricalrevisionistslow-burncerebralironicmelancholicunsettling

What happens

Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson is a 1976 revisionist Western film directed by Robert Altman and based on the 1968 play Indians by Arthur Kopit. It stars Paul Newman as William F. Cody, alias Buffalo Bill, along with Geraldine Chaplin, Will Sampson, Joel Grey, Harvey Keitel, and Burt Lancaster as Bill's biographer, Ned Buntline. It was filmed in Panavision by cinematographer Paul Lohmann. As in his earlier film M*A*S*H, Altman skewers an American historical myth of heroism, in this case the notion that noble white men fighting bloodthirsty savages won the West. However, the film was poorly received at the time of its release, as the country was celebrating its bicentennial. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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