Soldier Blue [Blu-ray]

Product Information

In 1877 Colorado Territory, a young woman, Cresta Lee, and young Colorado 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 when the chief challenges him. 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. Just had a response from Jon Mulvaney - the Customer Service guy from Criterion. Sadly, it's only a pre-generated reply. The film's one redeeming feature is that the scenery looks beautiful. All Westerns have beautiful scenery. You'd be better off with any one of the others. 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." [11] 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." [11] 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." [12] Contemporary [ edit ] caught up with Soldier Blue on home video, I was disappointed. Although much of the material excised for the

An allegory to Vietnam specifically? More than that, an allegory of what the United States was born to be, where it was that it gave birth to itself, what it is supposed to do and what it actually does. America is a dream. When we wake up we are forced to deal with reality and the deeds of imperfect people, or remain sleeping -but, sometimes, reality catches-up with us whether we like it or not. News of the My Lai Massacre caused anti-war protesters to grow even more vocal. Support of the Vietnam War was at an all time low, horrific images were all over the news and horror reports flooded the radios. In this era of bloodshed, cinema likewise became increasingly violent, films like "The Wild Bunch", "Straw Dogs", "Blue Soldier" etc, venting their rage on screen.

I would say that most people in our company didn't consider the Vietnamese human." – Dennis Bunning The Europeans wanted the Native's land and resources while the Indians wanted the technology of the Europeans. Both sides used treaties to make peace while still trying to get what they wanted when war was too expensive. Both sides made war when they felt no other option. Multiple film critics said Soldier Blue evoked the My Lai massacre, which had been disclosed to the American public the previous year. [10] 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." [6]

UK release is the original uncut version at 114 minutes, excludes all 'toned down' material from USA "PG-rated" version and includes all director's material in climatic scene, except for 36 seconds cut from a scene showing the rape of an Indian woman during the massacre of the village." Modern critics and scholars have alternately described Soldier Blue as a revisionist western [13] anti-American, [14] and as an exploitation film. [5] In 2004, the BBC named it "one of the most significant American films ever made." [15] 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: [16] 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." [5] 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 explicit attempt to move past Hollywood stereotypes." [19]Almost every two minutes Cresta scornfully calls Honus "Soldier Blue." It doesn't take a genius to work out that she'll be talking in a different tone quite soon, such as, "Oh Soldier Blue, you're so dreamy", or "Well, what do you think of your country now, Soldier Blue?"