It is inevitable that Buffalo Bill and the Indians will be compared to McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and its also inevitable that the former movie will lose in that comparison. But Robert Altman's second revisionist Western has lots of problems of its own, and even setting aside the earlier masterpiece, it's frankly a poor effort.
Based on a play by Arthur Kopit simply called Indians, Altman's adaption centers around the famous showman "Buffalo Bill" Cody, who is played in an unlikely bit of casting by Paul Newman. The movie is inspired one the strangest episodes in American show business. After surrendering to the government and being imprisoned for years, the Sioux chief Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) briefly joined Cody's show, apparently to make some extra cash, or perhaps (as the film speculates) to show the white people how bad the Sioux really were treated. We are not surprised when an inevitable culture clash occurs- Cody refuses to see Sitting Bull as the leader of another nation and just sees him as an arrogant member of lesser race.
I suppose that a good movie could be made from this material, but it's not this one. The movie is not sunk by any one terminal defect, but many smaller problems that just build and build. For one thing, the film's ideas are not particularly new. Altman seems to be telling us that people were really racist back in the 1880's, and that's bad. The treatment of Sitting Bull might actually border on a sort of reverse racism- the leader is portrayed as virtual Sioux saint, always stoic and never emotional. (Native American writer Sherman Alexie has argued that this "positive" portrayal is just as fictitious as the evil Redman stereotype). Furthermore the full Altman-esq treatment is not really appropriate for this material. The zooms and loose narrative structure take us out of the movie instead of drawing us in, as they did in McCabe. The entire film is set one on (admitantly large) outdoor location, betraying its theatrical origins. Newman is miscast as Cody, ands strangely lacks the charisma he brings to other parts (and that the real Buffalo Bill must have certainly have). Finnally, I have often found Altman's sense of humor to be annoying and the comic relief here (most of it provided by Geraldine Chaplin as Annie Oakley) is unnecessary and juvenile, like M*A*S*H.
There are some highlights, of course- it is in interesting to see a recreation of the Wild West show, Pat McCormick has fun as President Grover Cleveland, and the movie does have a strong ending. But overall, this is not one of the films Altman will be remembered for.
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)