Soldier Blue

Soldier Blue was released in 1970, at a time when the Vietnam War was raging and US soldiers were being court martialled for the horrifying atrocities committed at My Lai. Its antiwar stance, its revisionism and its graphic depictions of violence and rape attracted much controversy, yet, despite its faults, the film does still carry some power and poignancy; its condemnation of war as valid today as it was then.

In November 1864, a regiment of US soldiers attacked an Indian village at Sand Creek, Colorado, massacring around 400 men, women and children. The backdrop to this horrific violence was one of dishonesty, greed and subterfuge. The US and the Cheyenne, Arapaho and other Indian tribes had signed a treaty which officially permitted Americans to create roads and military posts throughout the Colorado Territory without impinging on the Indians’ rights to the land. It wasn’t long, however, until the peaceful relationship the treaty intended to foster gradually deteriorated, as thousands of American prospectors came forth to mine the gold in the Rocky Mountains. White man’s villages sprang up and grew, settlers staked claims to Indian territory, politicians manoeuvred for the tribes to surrender more of their land. Despite all this, the Indians maintained peace.
A second treaty was put forward which proposed containing the Indians in one area bordering Sand Creek and the Arkansas River. The Indians would retain their rights to move freely throughout the land to hunt and trade, but would cede most of their territory to the US. Only six out of 44 Indian chiefs signed the treaty, supposedly without the approval of the others, yet the document was ratified.
When the American Civil War began in 1861, the Colorado Territory began to see much activity in the form of military mobilisation, and conflicts arose frequently between US soldiers and the Indian tribes. One regiment in particular, the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers, under the direction of Colonel John Chivington, a man who saw it at his God-given duty to kill Indians, would come to play a terrible part in the violation and bloodshed at Sand Creek, an event that plays out the final act of Ralph Nelson’s provocative film.

The ‘Soldier Blue’ of the title, Honus Gant, is serving with that regiment (or the fictionalised version of it, the 11th Colorado). The film begins with the soldiers escorting a coach to Fort Reunion, the regiment’s base; the coach carrying not only a strongbox full of gold but a female passenger, Cresta Marybelle Lee (Candice Bergen), a beautiful white girl who has escaped after spending two years living captive with the Cheyenne. The travelling party is ambushed by Indians and only Cresta and Honus (Peter Strauss) survive the bloody battle, fleeing into the mountains. The film is centred around the relationship between these two diametrically opposed characters, as they set off through the wilderness in search of help.
Along the way, the pair are stopped by a small band of Indians out hunting. Cresta, the more world-wise and experienced of the two, knows they will rape her if Honus refuses to take part in a life-or-death knife fight with the head Indian. Against the odds, Honus emerges the winner and they continue on, later stumbling upon the camp of Isaac Q. Cumber (Donald Pleasence), a snaggle-toothed sneak of a man who makes his living selling guns to the Cheyenne.
It is here that the conflict between Honus and Cresta reaches its peak, and it leads the two of them to re-evaluate their viewpoints on life. Honus, the soldier, knows there are guns hidden in Cumber’s coach – guns that will be used to kill fellow American soldiers -- and is determined to destroy them. Cresta, however, sides with the Cheyenne, who she sees as kin, arguing that the Indians are forced to defend themselves against the white man, who is stealing their land and destroying their way of life. Honus discovers the guns but is apprehended by Cumber, and he and Cresta are taken prisoner. They eventually manage to escape, but Honus is shot and wounded and the pair are forced to hide out in a cave. The next morning, Cresta sets out alone across the plains, where she is found and taken to the camp of the 11th Colorado. Here, she is reunited with her fiancé, a Lt. McNair, and asks him to help bring back the seriously wounded Honus. Her pleas fall on deaf ears, as she finds that the commanding officer, Colonel Iverson (based on John Chivington), is planning a retaliatory strike on the Cheyenne for the killings we saw at the beginning of the film. Horrified, Cresta rides back to the Cheyenne village where she lived for two years, and warns them of the forthcoming attack. Although the Indians are able to prepare themselves for war, they cannot hold back Iverson’s regiment of pumped-up, barbaric and bloodthirsty savages; women and children are brutally murdered, Cresta is attacked and raped, and Honus looks on, helpless and impotent.

Soldier Blue seems to serve as both historical document and Vietnam War allegory, and some critics have argued that these intentions for the film fail to work in tandem. It’s a fair point, as Nelson’s desire to capture some of the liberal attitudes of the early ‘70s results in the film coming off, at times, as a bit too ‘peace and love’, when a low-key, balanced exploration of both sides’ perspectives -- the US and the Indians -- would have worked better. This straddling of ideas certainly hinders the characters, though that may also be down to Nelson’s choice of actors. Although their performances are by no means terrible – a lot of the interplay between Honus and Cresta is funny and engaging, and both are likeable ‘protagonists’ – Strauss and Bergen lack the depth and range to make the characters truly memorable and believable. (Bergen, in particular, has a little too much of that ‘hippie’ vibe; it’d be no surprise to discover that she walked out of Woodstock and straight onto the set of this movie.) Indeed, it isn’t until Donald Pleasence turns up as Cumber – arguably one of his most underrated and least-known performances – that you get a sense of a really great actor at work.

Despite being panned and reviled upon its release, and subsequently hacked into incomprehensibility by the censors, Soldier Blue, in its full form, is still worthy of a place in the canon of American westerns from the 1970s. It isn’t The Searchers, or indeed Little Big Man, but its examination of the conflict between whites and Indians is mostly well executed, arresting and poignant, if not for the faint of heart.