Penn's masterpiece

(Slight spoilers)
Now that, sadly, Arthur Penn is no longer with us, this film deserves to be re-released. Penn was one of the great enigmas of late 20th Century American cinema. For the 'great public' he was the maker of 'Bonnie & Clyde'. But this magnificent genre-bender - a comic western epic - is his most enduring contribution to cinema.
Dustin Hoffman magnificently plays the centenarian Jack Crabbe who, we are told had survived the Battle of the Little Bighorn. In a series of Citizen Kane-like reminiscence flashbacks we see how he moves back & forth between Indian (Sioux) and white 'invader' society.
But, being an Arthur Penn film, the (then) current ills of society are exquisitely exposed as commercialism, aggression, different varieties of sexuality, alcoholism, and a host of other problems are resonantly and often comically depicted, both in Indian and settler society.
Best of all, Penn really knows how to use the image to extract the maximum of meaning and emotion. Look, for example of the attack on the Indian village... all telephoto close-ups with the snow providing a powerful back-drop.
And the Sioux are, almost without exception, wonderful... 'Human Beings' before they realised that they were 'Native Americans'.
The final scene, where Old Lodge Skins decides that 'this is a good day to die', is one of the most moving and evocative scenes of its era.