Soldier Blue

Without question, in its unedited form, SOLDIER BLUE is one of the most upsetting and violent films of all times, perhaps even THE most violent. This remains so, even though the film was released way back in 1970. And up until late 2006, you could only see an uncut version of this film via imports. Lionsgate Video, however, has rectified this.

Basically a fictional re-enactment of the infamous 1864 Sand Creek massacre in Colorado by the U.S. Cavalry on a Cheyenne Indian village and the events that lead up to it, but actually based on Theodore V. Olsen's novel "Arrow In The Sun", SOLDIER BLUE, directed by Ralph Nelson (of CHARLY and LILIES OF THE FIELD fame), stars Candice Bergen and Peter Strauss as, respectively, a Cheyenne-raised white woman and a disenfranchised U.S. Cavalry officer who have survived a savage attack by Cheyenne Indians on an Army payroll wagon train and are forced to be together to survive, even as they disagree starkly on who is right in the white man-versus-Indian conflict. Eventually, of course, they start to fall in love. This gives a story that otherwise might be interpreted as an arguably pretentious attempt to link the Cavalry's atrocities of the past to the modern Army's behavior in Vietnam a certain amount of emotional validity. But it also leaves the viewer heavily unprepared for the incredibly horrific massacre that climaxes the film.

Even today, this massacre, a sequence of unbelievably extreme violence that involves hacked body parts, rape, and infinite bloodshed, makes SOLDIER BLUE very difficult for viewers to watch. In fact, when the film was re-released in 1974, much of that bloodshed was chopped off so the film could somehow get a 'PG' rating; it is that version that American viewers have had to put up with on video until late 2006. Apart from the brutal nature of that final sequence, the film's depiction of the Army as a bunch of bloodthirsty savages does not make SOLDIER BLUE an easy film to agree with--and contrary to what a previous reviewer said, I don't think it even comes close to being a politically correct movie. It may not be a masterpiece, the way THE WILD BUNCH or SAVING PRIVATE RYAN were (and they too were incredibly ferocious in terms of violence). But it's good that SOLDIER BLUE has finally made it to DVD in its original uncut form so that people can now judge its validity in whole, regardless of its politics or, even more, its enormously graphic finale. It is a film that HAS to be seen today.

Well, nearly the whole film tells the love story of a woman who has grown up at the Indians and an American soldier as well as their survival in the wilderness. The last 15 minutes however have the same shocking effect other controversial films like "Cannibal Holocaust" or "I spit on your grave" have got: it is shown how the US-cavalry massacres/slaughters an innocent and peaceful Indian tribe, how children get killed or even beheaded, women get raped and tortured to death, how genocide was done in the name of freedom, democracy and liberality. Extremely graphic, shocking and disturbing!!! A positive aspect of "Soldier Blue" is, that this film doesn´t deal with the typical "good Americans/bad Indians"-cliché: in this movie you won´t see a glorious hero like John Wayne riding into the sunset at the end, because "Soldier Blue" shows the darkest side of the American glory..!

Don't miss the beginning at any cost.Or else you would not hear Buffy Sainte-Marie's eponymous anthemic song (Yes this is my country,young and growing free and flowing from sea to sea...).The version of the song as performed here features a string arrangement not present in the original version (which is to be found on BSM's "she used to wanna be a ballerina",vanguard).This song is as moving today as it was 30 years ago,and when the singer implores "can't you see there's another way to love her?" it gains an universal meaning(not only American natives or Vietnamese as it was mooted at the time for the movie)

The movie is famous for the slaughter which ends it.Terribly realistic ,it remains impressive today and may repel some viewers.There's a very strong use of the score during these scenes.But most of the movie deals with the initiatory journey of a young naive soldier,"educated " by a woman who was captured by the Indians and had to live with them for a while.Candice Bergen's performance came aside as a shock at the time because she used to play frail young maids (Robert Wise's "the sand pebbles";Claude Lelouch's "vivre pour vivre" ) before.But there's a problem:her character is not really believable;just compare her with the heroines with a similar fate in Ford's movies :"the searchers" ,1956;"two rode together",1961..They are far from Crista 's outspoken and politically aware character.Actually ,it seems that this woman is a contemporary woman,with Joan Baez's, Buffy Sainte-Marie's or Jane Fonda's mind (in the late sixties)..

For all that,"soldier blue " is worth watching and superbly uses wide screen :the landscapes match Sainte-Marie's song.Primarily an intimate movie,for most of the time there are only two people on the screen.Hence the contrast with the violent finale.

What starts as a rather funny journey of Peter Strauss and Candice Bergen teasing and fighting each other, ends in a massacre of an Indian village shown in - for that time - very graphical and violent pictures, even a little gore. I like the movie because of the chemistry between both actors and find the mix of comedy and cruel war scenes not out of order - Little Big Man, starring Dustin Hoffman, coincidentally also published in 1970, got a similar mix. I guess the absurdity of war, the Vietnam War still raging, was one of the main impulses to make such a blend - how should one survive such mad times and still safe his soul without humor? Soldier Blue: funny and sad at the same time.

As released in the UK, this movie pushed the limits of movie violence to the virtually unwatchable. People literally were sick in the theatres. I saw the movie several times in the theatres and on video. It lost none of its impact on repeated viewing. My research indicates that since the movie depicted the massacre of an Indian village, it was thought not politically correct for viewing in unedited form in the US. It does show the horror of war in a most graphic way. I have not seen anything since that is even remotely close. The highly edited US version shows the power and degree of censorship that existed in the US. To my knowledge, the movie is still not available in the US in unedited form.