Soldier Blue

The voice-over at the end of the film describes the events we have just witnessed as taking place in 1864.

However,earlier in the movie Honus tells Cresta that his father was killed at the battle of Little Bighorn which occurred in 1876.

'Candice Bergen' (qv)'s character has shaved armpits.

This was not a practice for Western women until the twentieth century.

Part of a wave of revisionist westerns in the late 60s and early 70s, this alternately comic and violent film takes pains to point out the evil of the white man towards Native Americans. Strauss plays a rather green cavalry private who's part of a detail escorting a payroll to a fort, along with a recently recovered captive (Bergen) who was kept as the wife of a Cheyenne chief.

I was told about this film at an early age. But do not think I saw it when I was younger.

Soldier Blue (1970)Make no mistake, this is no masterpiece. But it reveals a lot about movies of the period, and about attitudes toward Native Americans and the Wild West.

Soldier Blue is unrelatable and over the top stupid, even though based on factual events.The ending nasty and inhumane, but putting that aside, it's amateurish throughout anyway.

The opening song is so bad that I had to skip past it. The orchestrated score is also horrible.

This film was obviously made to redress the imbalance of 'cowboy good, Indian bad' movies made for years previously. However, it goes too far in its portrayal of the violence inflicted by the cavalry.

I was surprised by the very critical comments of other viewers, particularly from the USA. Presumably they are people who believe that immigrant European white people were superior to the indigenous native Americans.

I believe that this is a very good portrayal of how the American west actually was, having studied the subject at school many years ago. Yes this is a very brutal film and some of the blood and guts doesn't look so real now, but this film still has the power to shock you and enable you to feel sympothay with the Native American Indians, who themselves are quite violent in this movie.

A love story with an anti war message. Made at the height of the Vietnam War.