La strage del 7º Cavalleggeri

Historians Love to Quibble and Nit-Pick with Hollywood's Treatment of "Real History".

But the "Bottom-Line" is that Most Movies are Made as Entertainment with a Profit Motive.

So Historical "Facts" Aside, as an Entertaining Piece of an Early Cinemascope Film (the first Independent) In the First-Half of the "Decade of the Western",

You Could Do Much Worse than this Nobly Intended Movie about the Sioux Chief "Sitting Bull",

His Constant Battles with "Forked-Tongue" Treaties and the General Inhumane Treatment of Prisoners,

Leading Up to the "Battle of Little Big-Horn" and Custer's Last Stand.

Playing Fast and Loose with some "Facts" is a Consideration to Make the Movie Box-Office Friendly.

But the Film Deserves Credit for Bucking the Trend of "White-Man Wins Called Victory...Indian Wins Called a Massacre" and Taking a Liberal Other-Sided Approach.

In the End it is Not Guilty of Over-Indulging the Re-Writing of History and Shows Respectable Behavior on Both Sides.

The Casting is Weak but the Story and the Epic Battles are Well Staged, Engaging, and Somewhat Informative.

All Things Considered...A Fine Film and Definitely...

Worth a Watch.

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 .

"Sitting Bull" as one might expect, takes place at the time of the infamous and oft filmed "Custer's Last Stand".

The story involves the efforts of the fictional Major Bob Parrish (Dale Robertson) and Sioux Chief Sitting Bull (J. Carroll Naish) to prevent a war between the Sioux nations and the U.S. Cavalry. On one side, Sitting Bull's chiefs led by Crazy Horse (Iron Eyes Cody) and Colonel Custer (Douglas Kennedy) on the other push their superiors into war.

The requisite love triangle involves Parrish, the General's daughter Kathy (Mary Murphy) and newspaperman Wentworth (william Hopper). Kathy turns away from Parrish when he is charged with insubordination and reduced in rank to Captain. She then becomes engaged to Wentworth.

Parrish meanwhile with the assistance of former black slave "Sam" (Joel Flueller)arranges a meeting between President U.S. Grant (John Hamilton) and Sitting Bull. However, before the meeting can take place several incidents occur and war breaks out culminating with Custer's last stand at the Little Big Horn.

J. Carroll Naish lends dignity to his portrayal of Sitting Bull. We see him as an intelligent caring and cautious leader who will stoop to war only as a last resort. In a move unusual for its time black actor Joel Flueller was cast in one of the leading roles in the film.

The battle scenes are spectacular and well staged by director Sidney Salkow. In spite of the contrived Hollywood ending, this western is a lot better than some would have you believe.

"Sitting Bull" is a film that shocked me. For a biopic/western, it's actually much closer to fact than I would have suspected. It also is much more sympathetic towards the Sioux nation than many westerns....and is well worth your time.

The story revolves around an officer who has been demoted. Bob Parrish (Dale Robertson) is not your typical cavalry officer, as he thinks that the American government should respect and treat the natives much better than they do. As he put it, 'they just want to live and raise their families'. But folks like General Custer and the rest give him a lot of guff and they seem to follow the old axiom, 'the only good Indian is a dead Indian'. What's to become of him and his mission to work WITH the natives instead of AGAINST them?

It is ironic that not only did Iron Eyes Cody appear in the film as Crazy Horse, but he was the consultant to the production about native culture. Only later in life did folks learn that Cody (the most American Indian looking guy on the planet) was actually an Italian!! But you can't blame the film....at the time everyone thought Cody was exactly what and who he pretended to be! But he and the filmmakers STILL got so much right in this one...and the movie holds up far better than most from the genre*. Well worth seeing and an excellent picture in so many ways.

*For the worst possible depiction of this same story, try "They Died With Their Boots On". While the cast was incredibly impressive (with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland), the facts are pretty much tossed out the window and Custer is depicted as a great man...not the incompetent he actually was.

The critic Dilys Powell once said there were no bad westerns; there were great westerns, there were good westerns and there were westerns and I suppose you could say Sidney Salkow's film "Sitting Bull" falls into the last category. As you might guess from the title it culminates in the Battle of Little Bighorn which, given that this is fundamentally a B-Movie western, is actually quite spectacularly handled while the movie itself falls into that small group of films to offer a sympathetic view of the plight of the Native American.

J. Carrol Naish is Sitting Bull and Dale Robertson, the cavalry man who's on the side of the Indians. Its view of history may be a little off the wall but it's a perfectly accessible 'Cowboys & Indians' picture which makes you wish it were better written and acted; the on-again-off-again love affair between Robertson and Mary Murphy is frankly embarrassing. Not a great western, then and maybe not even a good western but as Dilys might say, not a bad one either.