Soldier Blue

Soldier Blue is a 1970 American Revisionist Western film directed by Ralph Nelson and starring Candice Bergen, Peter Strauss, and Donald Pleasence. Adapted by John Gay from the novel "Arrow in the Sun" by T.V. Olsen, it is inspired by events of the 1864 Sand Creek massacre in the Colorado Territory. Nelson and Gay intended to utilize the narrative surrounding the Sand Creek massacre as an allegory for the contemporary Vietnam War.
Released in August 1970, the film drew attention for its frank depictions of violence, specifically its graphic final sequence. Some film scholars have cited "Soldier Blue" as a critique of America's "archetypal art form [the Western]," with other interpretations ranging from it being an anti-war picture to an exploitation film.
Plot.
In 1877 Colorado Territory, a young woman, Cresta Lee, and young U.S. Private Honus Gant are joined together by fate when they are the only two survivors after their group is massacred by the Cheyenne. Gant is devoted to his country and duty; Lee, who has lived with the Cheyenne for two years, is scornful of Gant (she refers to him as "Soldier Blue" derisively) and declares that in this conflict she sympathizes with them. The two must now try to make it to Fort Reunion, the army camp, where Cresta's fiancé, an army officer, waits for her. As they travel through the desert with very low supplies, hiding from the Indians, they are spotted by a group of Kiowa horsemen. Under pressure from Cresta, Honus fights and seriously wounds the group's chief. Honus finds himself unable to kill the disgraced Kiowa leader, whose own men stab him leaving Honus and Cresta alone. The ideological gulf between them is also revealed in their attitudes towards societal mores, with the almost-puritanical Honus disturbed by things Cresta barely notices.
The duo are pursued by a corrupt trader who sells guns to the Cheyenne, but whose latest shipment of weapons Honus has managed to destroy. An injured Honus finds himself in a cave where Cresta has left him to get help. She arrives at Fort Reunion, only to discover that her fiancé's cavalry unit plans to attack the peaceful Indian village of the Cheyenne the following day. She rides to the village in time to warn Spotted Wolf, the Cheyenne chief. The chief does not recognize the danger and, under a U.S. flag, rides out to extend a hand of friendship to the American soldiers. The soldiers, however, obey the orders of their psychopathic commanding officer and open artillery fire on the village.
After a cavalry charge decimates the Indian men, the soldiers enter the village and begin to rape and kill the Cheyenne women. Honus attempts to halt the atrocities, to no avail. Cresta attempts to lead the remaining women and children to safety, but her group is discovered and massacred, though Cresta herself survives. Honus is dragged away chained behind an army wagon while a despairing Cresta is left with the few Cheyenne survivors.
Production.
The film provided the first motion picture account of the Sand Creek massacre, one of the most infamous incidents in the history of the American frontier, in which Colorado Territory militia under Colonel John M. Chivington massacred a defenseless village of Cheyenne and Arapaho on the Colorado Eastern Plains.
The account of the massacre is included as part of a longer fictionalized story about the escape of two white survivors from an earlier massacre of U.S. Cavalry troops by Cheyenne, and names of the actual historical characters were changed. Director Nelson stated that he was inspired to make the film based on the wars in Vietnam and Songmy.
Principal photography began on October 28, 1969, with exterior photography taking place in Mexico. Arthur J. Ornitz was originally hired as the film's cinematographer, but was replaced by Robert B. Hauser several weeks into production. According to Bergen, a large van full of prosthetics was brought in during the filming of the violent battle sequences, full of dummy body parts and animatronics. Additionally, amputees from Mexico City were hired to serve as extras during the final massacre sequence.
Release.
"Soldier Blue" premiered in New York City on August 12, 1970, and opened in Los Angeles two days later on August 14, 1970.
Box office.
The film was the third-most popular film at the British box office in 1971. It brought $1.2 million from the U.S./ Canada rentals. The title song, written and performed by Buffy Sainte-Marie, was released as a single and became a top ten hit in the UK as well as other countries in Europe and Japan during the summer of 1971.
Reception.
Contemporaneous.
Multiple film critics said "Soldier Blue" evoked the My Lai massacre, which had been disclosed to the American public the previous year. In September 1970, Dotson Rader writing in "The New York Times", remarked that "Soldier Blue" "must be numbered among the most significant, the most brutal and liberating, the most honest American films ever made."
Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" wrote of the film: ""Soldier Blue" is indeed savage, but it wears its cloak of "truth" self-consciously. It is supposed to be a pro-Indian movie, and at the end the camera tells us the story was true, more or less, and that the Army chief of staff himself called the massacre shown in the film one of the most shameful moments in American history." He added: "So it was, and of course we're supposed to make the connection with My Lai and take "Soldier Blue" as an allegory for Vietnam. But that just won't do. The film is too mixed up to qualify as a serious allegory about anything." The "Time Out" film guide called the film "a grimly embarrassing anti-racist Western about the U.S. Cavalry's notorious Sand Creek Indian massacre in 1864. In the interests of propaganda, one might just about stomach the way the massacre itself is turned into a gleefully exploitative gore-fest of blood and amputated limbs; but not when it's associated with a desert romance that's shot like an ad-man's wet dream, all soft focus and sweet nothings."
Contemporary.
Modern critics and scholars have alternately described "Soldier Blue" as a revisionist western "anti-American," and as an exploitation film. In 2004, the BBC named it "one of the most significant American films ever made." British author and critic P.B. Hurst, who wrote the 2008 book "The Most Savage Film: Soldier Blue, Cinematic Violence and the Horrors of War", said of the film:
Retrospective analysis has placed the film in a tradition of motion pictures of the early 1970s – such as "Ulzana's Raid" (1972) – which were used as "natural venues for remarking on the killing of women and children by American soldiers" in light of the political conflicts of the era. However, the "visual excesses" of the film's most violent sequences have been similarly criticized as exploitative by modern critics as well.
In a 2005 article on the film in "Uncut", Kevin Maher deemed it "a bloody 1970 exploitation western ... [which] has a gore-count worthy of "Cannibal Holocaust"." "TV Guide" awarded the film one out of five stars, writing: ""Soldier Blue" suffers from Bergen's weak performance and Strauss is bland, but the parallel between the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and Vietnam's My Lai incident is disturbing and the film's depiction of Native American life is an explicite attempt to move past Hollywood stereotypes."
Film scholar Christopher Frayling described "Soldier Blue" as a "much more angry film" than its contemporary Westerns, which "challenges the language of the traditional Western at the same time as its ideological bases." Frayling also praised its cinematography and visual elements in his 2006 book "Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone": "most critics succeeded in missing the really inventive sections of "Soldier Blue", which involve Nelson's use of elaborate zooms, and of untraditional compositions, both of which subtly explore the relationship between the 'initiates' and the virgin land which surrounds them."
Recalling the film, star Candice Bergen commented that it was "a movie whose heart, if nothing else, was in the right place."
In Culture.
The following quote appears, along with other figures and images, on the 2010 work “Soldier Blue” (various visual art mediums on paper) by artist Andrea Carlson: “Due to the controversial and devastating nature of SOLDIER BLUE the management of this theatre will not allow patrons to enter after the film has begun. Thank you for your cooperation.”