Das letzte Gefecht (1954)

Das letzte Gefecht: Directed by Sidney Salkow. With Dale Robertson, Mary Murphy, J. Carrol Naish, John Litel. A cavalry officer sympathetic to the wronged Sioux fixes a meeting between Chief Sitting Bull and President Grant but a dishonest Indian Agent and a hateful General Custer test the Sioux’s patience, threatening to derail the peace-talks.

“TCM played this last night. Itu0026#39;s cheap and shallow Saturday matinée stuff as the other comments suggest. I noticed two things: the day-for-night shots look good but the director(s) rarely used closeups. Most of the shots are long or waist shots, or two shots.This was an early CinemaScope production and perhaps they were limited by the lenses they had (the lenses were not plentiful at this time, especially to non- Fox producers). u0026quot;Sitting Bullu0026quot; was the first independent production to be shot in CinemaScope. This was W. R. Franku0026#39;s last feature film production; he was a Minneapolis, MN theatre owner. The world premiere was held August 19, 1954 in Sioux Falls, SD. What did the Sioux Falls cinema-goers think of this picture being shot in Mexico?! It opened October 7, 1954 at the State Theatre in Minneapolis and Paramount in St. Paul. Both of the citiesu0026#39; film critics, Will Jones and Bill Diehl, hated the film. Comment cards were handed out at both theatres. A trade magazine item in April 1953 said that Frank had set May 20 as the productionu0026#39;s start date, but decided to put it off until July when CinemaScope equipment was available. As early as 1950 actors such as Victor Jory were announced as being signed for this production. Later, names such as Boris Karloff and Dennis Morgan were mentioned in the trade press.”