(1970)
2
Bruce Eder
When they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, they must have had film projects like Soldier Blue in mind. It's director, Ralph Nelson, was one of the country's more thoughtful and daring filmmakers of the 1960s and '70s, a kind of edgier rival to Stanley Kramer. Starting with Requiem for a Heavyweight, Nelson was a successful and provocative filmmaker, and he made some superb movies dealing with issues of racism and racism-inspired violence during both decades, including Lilies of the Field (1963), Duel at Diablo (1966), tick...tick...tick (1970), and The Wilby Conspiracy (1975), and enjoyed both critical and commercial success. His sensibilities were among the most articulate and thoughtful among left-leaning directors of the period. He intended Soldier Blue as both a statement of historical fact, about the white man's treatment of Native Americans, and as an allegory about America's role in Vietnam; and had either been brought off properly, he might well have had a major success on his hands, or, at the very least, a movie that seriously pricked the conscience of anyone who did see it. Unfortunately, something went seriously wrong in the writing, acting, and thinking departments when it was time to conceive this movie and its overall approach to its subject matter. It opens well enough, with a fine introductory segment (featuring excellent performances by James Hampton, Dana Elcar, et al.) that holds up extremely well despite some unfortunate modern colloquialisms that sneak into the dialogue.
Much less successful is the center section of the movie, depicting the trek through the desert by massacre survivors Cresta (Candice Bergen) and Honus (Peter Strauss), which much rests on Candice Bergen's extremely limited acting skills and a script that tries to appeal to 1970-era youth even as it also brings in very hackneyed elements of romantic comedy. Neither aspect works -- Bergen's and Strauss' dialogue is embarrassingly arch, and neither one is remotely good enough an actor to bring this off. At moments they're made to sound like a pair of hippies (or, more properly, one hippie-type chick and one middle-class would-be joiner slowly realizing what he's missed in life) on the frontier; and Bergen's outbursts -- and her character has many of them -- are also much more 1970 than 1870 in language and expression. The middle section of the movie hardly prepares the audience for the final section, which should be the payoff, depicting the attack on the village. It's memorable for its violence and brutality (most of which was cut for broadcast television), and well executed, but its merits hardly make up for the problems getting us there. The lack of cohesion also isn't helped by an indifferent score -- at least where original material is concerned -- from Roy Budd, who had never written a full orchestral score before in his life. (Ironically, Budd was the only one to benefit from his participation in the movie, getting a raft of assignment offers from other producers.)
The movie's denouement is directly based on the notorious 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, which was carried out under orders from a militia colonel named Chivington, who was subsequently relegated to the ranks of the most notorious killers of Native Americans in our history. And had that been all that Soldier Blue was about, it might today be a cult Western. But Nelson also intended it as an allegory about the Mi Lai Massacre in Vietnam (news of which had only surfaced in the previous year, and which was being prosecuted in 1970), and the larger American involvement in Vietnam. So the movie really seems intended as a statement about the inevitable savagery and casualties of war, of any era -- and the message about Vietnam would seem to explain (if not justify) the improbabilities of speech and dialogue coming from Bergen and Strauss' characters. But Nelson had gotten us to that denouement and statement by way of such as shaky path, and over such a rocky road to the massacre, that his message was lost. Liberal filmgoers were more sickened by what they saw, and it was red meat to the right, whose defenders attacked the movie mercilessly. It was subsequently shown on television, where cuts in the TV prints resulted in some scenes becoming awkward to watch if not incomprehensible. In the end, several different versions of the movie came into existence, including three different editions at "full length," with running times at 105, 109, and 112 minutes. Additionally, Soldier Blue was shot in Panavision, which made the cropped TV prints even more confusing and difficult to watch. In the end, the movie all but disappeared in its original form, or any viable form, disdained by critics and audiences -- even those sympathetic to its point-of-view -- who couldn't get past its inconsistencies. Strangely enough, in the same year that Soldier Blue appeared (and garnered almost universally negative reviews), another movie built around the history of whites' relations with the Native Americans -- Little Big Man, directed by Arthur Penn -- and encompassing its own interpretation of the Sand Creek Massacre, was also released, to much greater critical and box-office success.
releases for Soldier Blue on AllMovie
Soldier Blue (1970)
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Title/Studio |
Release Date |
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Soldier Blue
Optimum
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September 15, 2008 |
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Soldier Blue
Lions Gate
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December 12, 2006 |
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Soldier Blue
Momentum Pictures
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March 21, 2005 |
