Search - Cody! - An Evening With Buffalo Bill on DVD

Cody! An Evening with Buffalo Bill

Steven Hellerstedt | 07/12/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"One-man shows are a weird brand of entertainment, especially when committed to film or tape. They're about as minimalist as it gets - an actor talking and sometimes picking up and playing with a prop. The best I've ever seen was Robert Altman's SECRET HONOR (1984), which starred a riveting Philip Baker Hall as a broken Richard Nixon immediately following his resignation. On stage or film, one-man shows need a compelling subject, a convincing actor and a strong script. Anything more is gravy.
CODY! AN EVENING WITH BUFFALO BILL is a shot-on-video one-manner that stars Peter Sherayko as the title character. Buffalo Bill, army scout, Indian fighter and showman par excellence, is an interesting enough subject. Peter Sherayko, who I've never seen or even heard of, looks and sounds and emotes more or less how I imagine the real Buffalo Bill would. In other words, I bought his performance and enjoyed it, although he doesn't seem to be a very active film actor. The staging is another issue. This presentation is pretty much a point-the-camera-and-shoot affair. Except for a few cutaway shots - a very few - the camera never leaves its medium close-up, straight on angle. Although a few props are used and a few real photographs are superimposed over Sherayko's image, this is not a very visually ambitious film.
Critic Bernard DeVoto called the American West the `borderland of fable,' and few Americans have lived as fabulous a life as Buffalo Bill Cody. A winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1872 for his service as Indian scout and his participation in a number of battles in the Indian wars, he was also a bossed and embellished hero in a number of dime novels written by Ned Buntline. In 1883 Buffalo Bill introduced his first Wild West Show and the rest, as they say, is history.
CODY! isn't nearly a complete portrait of its subject, but it nicely balances the public and the private man. It devotes a good chunk of time to Cody's friendships with Wild Bill Hickok and Sitting Bull and Cody's Wild West show, as well as his failed marriage and the severe financial problems that dogged his final years. Recommended especially for those with an existing interest in the subject.
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