Sitting Bull (1954)

Overrated

One of my all time favorites.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

As tensions between the Souix and the United States Army heat up, sympathetic Cavalry officer Dale Robertson asks and is sent to try to quell the anger of Chief Sitting Bull, who's son was recently murdered by a brutish bureaucrat.Although this gets high marks for attempting to be even handed, this American-Mexican co-production is too long and too ordinary, with a silly fifties-style romantic subplot that gets in the way of the action and swells the running time.The usually excellent character actor J. Carroll Naish is a pretty wooden Sitting Bull while Iron Eyes Cody fares much better as Crazy Horse.For a film called Sitting Bull, it spends way too much time with the Cavalry and not enough time with the title subject. Despite the disappointing performance by Naish, his scenes with Cody are much more interesting than Robertson's.The well staged battle at the Little Big Horn, reportedly the most faithful ever filmed, occurs way too late in the proceedings to help the picture and the ending is way to corny.

I give them credit for trying to be politically correct. There intent was noble, portraying the Indian as a victim of the American Military and indeed American Policy. That being said, I must admit that the acting in general was terrible, the dialogue was stilted and the historical accuracy was missing. I often laughed at Hollowood's early attempts to portray Native Americans with actors who did not have an ounce of Indian blood in them. J. Carroll Nash, a truly fine actor was Irish and sounded like an Indian from Brooklyn. Mr. Cody, who claimed to be an Indian was only married to one. He was Italian.It was difficult to be sympathetic to the lead character, Major Parrish only because the actor who portrayed him, Dale Robertson, was so bad. A for intent, F for execution.

The picture concerns Sitting Bull (J. Carrol Naish) , celebrated chief and mystic of the Hunkpapa Sioux and Major Robert Parrish (Dale Robertson) . Parrish clashes Colonel Custer (Douglas Kennedy) and his superiors . He's degraded and sent an Indian reservation where the starving natives are mistreated and suffering extreme famine . Meanwhile , being developed a loving triangle between his girlfriend (Mary Murphy) and a war journalist (William Hooper) . Later on , he is appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant (John Hamilton) to achieve a peace treatise with Sitting Bull to attempt to prevent the bloodshed and he then fights a dangerous duel against Crazy Horse (Iron Heyes Cody) . Parrish helps Indians and is accused as a traitor , being court-martialed for "collaborating" with the enemy . Chief Sitting Bull of the Sioux tribe is forced by the Indian-hating General Custer to react with violence , resulting in the known Last Stand at Little Bighorn . This exciting movie contains western action , romance , shoot-outs and spectacular battles . The yarn was shot outside of Mexico City and in the Churubusco Azteca studios . Washed-out print , the film needs urgently a perfect remastering . It appears as a technical adviser and designer Indian costumes , a secondary actor named Iron Eyes Cody , usual player as Indian roles (Great Sioux Massacre , A man called Horse) , though with Sicilian origin . The motion picture was regularly directed by Sidney Salkow . The film is a fiction , but partially based on real events . The reality happened in December 1873 when the Commissioner of Indian Affairs directed all Sioux bands to enter reservations by the end of January 1876 or be declared hostile . Many bands of Sioux did not meet this deadline and were attacked by US troops . Crazy Horse and his Oglala people moved north to join forces with Sitting Bull , by the spring of 1876 some 3000 Teton Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors had assembled at Sitting Bull's camp in the valley of the Little Big Horn in Montana. On 25 June 1876 Crazy Horse and other war chiefs led the allied warriors against General Custer and his seventh Cavalry , Custer and all the man under his direct command were killed . This victory , however , brought relentless retaliation from the army and Sioux were scattered . Sitting Bull and his followers fled to Canada and stayed there until July 1881 , when he returned to the US and surrendered at Fort Buford , Montana . After he was placed on a South Dakota reservation . For a year Sitting Bull went a tour with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show . He continued to regard himself as chief of his people and he earned the enmity of an Indian agent . On 25 December 1890 , Indian policemen went to take the chief , his followers tried to prevent this and in the struggle he was shot dead .

Unless you are a big fan of the Italian actor Iron Eyes Cody, this one doesn't have much to offer. The subplot with Dale Robertson being rejected by his fiancée because he is demoted was irritating, that he takes her back after her new fiancée is killed is puerile. The historical blunders are pretty well covered in other reviews. The battle scene was sad, the same Indian was shot off his horse many times. The final shot of Custer, lying there with an obvious box under his shirt to hold up the arrow, was laughable. When they decided to have Sitting Bull arrive at the fort to save Robertson from a firing squad, they drove the final cinematic nail in this film's coffin.