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Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786300251090 Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC ISBN: 6300251098 Label: 20th Century Fox Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Publisher: 20th Century Fox Release Date: January 01, 1998 Running Time: 114 minutes Sales Rank: 13083 Studio: 20th Century Fox Theatrical Release Date: 1970-05
Amazon.com: American Indians were a "cool" factor in 1970 cinema, the year A Man Called Horse made its vigorous, feverishly real, and occasionally shocking debut alongside Little Big Man and Soldier Blue. Unlike the latter two films, however, Horse is less an allegory for Vietnam-era America and more of a vision quest for historical identity. In one of his defining roles, Richard Harris plays an English aristocrat captured by Dakota Sioux in 1825. Over time, he adopts their way of life and eventually becomes tribal leader--but not before undergoing savage initiation rituals, the most famous of which involves being suspended by blades inserted beneath Harris's pectoral muscles. Horse looks clunky, quaint, and inadvertently demeaning in some respects today, but the film's Native American milieu is at least defined on its own terms, i.e., whole cloth and apart from familiar Western conventions. The real draw is Harris, whose performance has a soulful integrity. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - If you're into factual Indian Culture, stay away.
This is another wreck of Indian ways and culture told by Hollywood story tellers, who had no idea what an Indian really was. If you look at the fact that Sioux Indians were in the North West, then why did his companion, who spoke French, was the way of Indians in the lower East of America.
Besides that, why did Harris's character, who after living with the Indians for so long, never bothered to even learn their language. At one point, he is teaching his new wife english...how sad. But, that's Hollywood, and this is an exploitation Hollywood-style, of the true and authentic Indian Cultures. ... Read More
Rating: - Silverstein's camera captures beautifully the expansive outdoor of the Sioux way of life and their rituals...
The story begins with a British aristocrat named John Morgan who finds himself captured by Sioux warriors... At first he's mocked and treated like an animal and then he's dragged to their camp where he is given to work for an old squaw (Judith Anderson).
Before too long the 'grand white gentleman' up with another captive Batise (Jean Gascon) whose family was all massacred five years ago by the Indians acts as translator for Morgan... One day after killing two Shoshone Indians from another tribe and scalping one of them, John gains trust and respect from his captives thus paving the ... Read More
Rating: - A first in empathy for Sioux Indians
It is one of the rare films about American Indians that is not at all concerned by their extermination by Custer and company. But it is in fact a lot deeper than that. It shows from inside the functioning, the culture, the rites and rituals of Sioux Indians when a white English Lord is captured and turned into a slave for some time. It shows how he manages to become a warrior by killing two Shoshone assailants. Then he marries the sister of the chief and eventually becomes the chief after a war with the Shoshones who attack the village that he defends successfully. And then they move. It shows how ... Read More
Rating: - History of Native American Life
Being a history teacher, I needed a movie that would depict realistic Native American life for a Texas history unit. I remembered this movie
from my youth and what an impact it made on the nation. My students are not exposed to those great epic movies of yesterday. This film is an accurate accounting of everyday village life of the Sioux. It truly is a
historical classic with superb acting from Richard Harris and others. It is a must see and one for our children to view in their studies of Native Americans.
Rating: - A Learning Experience
If people thought Mel Gibson had it tough getting people to watch a movie that was fully in Aramaic, think back to 1970 when A Man Called Horse came out. This movie is almost entirely spoken in Lakota, and there aren't subtitles. This helps you to really get a sense of what it was like to be thrown into a foreign culture and to try to thrive there.
Richard Harris plays John Morgan, a nobleman from England who has gotten bored with life and has been romping around the plans of the American West to find something more interesting. This is back in the 1820s, before the civil war, when there ... Read More
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