Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
1976
Golden Bear — 26th Berlin International Film Festival
- Director:
- Robert Altman
- Studio:
- Lion's Gate Films
- Starring:
- Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel, Will Sampson
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In 1885, Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show hires the real Chief Sitting Bull as a headline attraction, expecting him to play into the legend of the murderous savage that Cody has built his fame on. Instead Sitting Bull carries himself with quiet dignity and refuses to reenact Custer's Last Stand as anything but what it was, infuriating the vain Cody, who can no longer separate his invented persona from reality. Robert Altman's episodic, behind-the-scenes portrait of the show's performers and hangers-on turns the celebration of frontier heroism into a study of American self-mythology.