The white men spend more time fighting each other than the Indians until eventually they arrive at Little Big Horn in this rather static and talky western in which J. Carrol Naish brings gravitas to the title role and Douglas Kennedy's briefly-seen Custer isn't the usual flamboyant caricature.

"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.

Right out of the gate, it probably would have been best if this film came with a warning to sit back and view it as the work of fiction that it is, rather than try to figure out which elements may or may not have been historically accurate. As it is, I'm ready to dismiss it entirely as a contrived piece of movie making that has little to recommend it.

Of the figures presented, Chief Sitting Bull probably acquits himself most favorably, portrayed by veteran J. Carroll Naish. He's generally characterized as preferring peace, though from a pragmatic point of view, knowing that the next great war against the white man will probably wipe out his people, the seven great nations of the Sioux. His warrior chief Crazy Horse (Iron Eyes Cody) on the other hand, chomps at the bit to don the war paint and go on a tear. When a proposed meeting between Sitting Bull and President Grant (John Hamilton) fails to materialize, events converge to play out in a scenario that we now know as the Battle of Little Big Horn, but again, with great liberty taken with the known facts. Yes, Yellow Hair Custer (Douglas Kennedy) dies in battle, but this time around at least two men survive to report back to General Howell, along with the film's top billed Dale Robertson, as Captain Robert Parrish. Parrish escapes a firing squad for treason after leading the Sioux to safety after Little Big Horn (huh?), thanks to the intercession of Sitting Bull (double huh?).

A lot of emphasis in the film is put on Sitting Bull's requirement that President Grant meet with him by the next full moon to consider a peace plan. As the time draws near, we see Sitting Bull on the final night looking skyward to the full moon with no word of the president. The very next moment he's walking in broad daylight to counsel with his war chiefs.

I got a kick out of the opening credits, mentioning Iron Eyes Cody as "Technical Adviser and Indian Costumes"; in brackets he's called a "Famous T.V. Star". Speaking of costumes, both Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse are routinely shown in full regalia and war bonnet, though my limited knowledge of Indian custom tells me that full head dress was limited to rare occasions, so chalk up another one to poetic license.

I guess it's fitting then that the movie humorously closes on what probably best describes it in a closing credit, though my copy may have been improperly cropped. There in big bold letters, it states "A Rank Product", distributed by United Artists - sadly, how true.