The western, out of all the film genres, is probably the lease prone to becoming dated. Films like Peyton Place and Saturday Night Fever quickly become relics from a different era but the western has remained comparatively unchanged. The violence is more explicit, the set design grubbier and (presumably) truer to life, but westerns from the sixties and earlier never really appear as dated as most other genres. So it's surprising how badly this controversial Ralph Nelson oater has fared since its release in 1970.
The soundtrack Buffy Saint Marie's track aside doesn't help; it places the film squarely in the late sixties, as does the strident attitude of Candice Bergen's hippy chick character, a white woman back with her people after being abducted by Indians. She looks as if she would be more at home on the rooftop of some university campus than roaming the plains of the wild west. She would probably be toned down if the film were to be remade today - at times you could believe Bergen is reaching for laughs that don't really belong here. Strauss, who with this and Rich Man, Poor Man had two (unsuccessful) bites at the apple, is largely unmemorable, although his character, the naïve and prudish Honus Gent, does grow as the film progresses.
The parallels with the US involvement in the Vietnamese war are blindingly obvious, and work better when they're not being shoved in your face. All the white folk are ignorant trash, whatever their social standing might be, while the Indians despite a savage massacre of a cavalry unit early in the film, are largely portrayed as noble savages occupying a lofty moral plain unattainable to the whites.
No review of Soldier Blue would be complete without some mention of the violence that created such a fuss back in the 70s. Some of it still packs a punch nearly 40 years later, although more for its shock value than its goriness or explicitness. An Indian boy gets a bullet through the head, a squaw is beheaded, another squaw is raped and mutilated by marauding cavalry. Some of it the beheading particularly look almost amateurish compared to what can be achieved today, but it must have been gut-wrenchingly shocking to an audience back then.
The soundtrack Buffy Saint Marie's track aside doesn't help; it places the film squarely in the late sixties, as does the strident attitude of Candice Bergen's hippy chick character, a white woman back with her people after being abducted by Indians. She looks as if she would be more at home on the rooftop of some university campus than roaming the plains of the wild west. She would probably be toned down if the film were to be remade today - at times you could believe Bergen is reaching for laughs that don't really belong here. Strauss, who with this and Rich Man, Poor Man had two (unsuccessful) bites at the apple, is largely unmemorable, although his character, the naïve and prudish Honus Gent, does grow as the film progresses.
The parallels with the US involvement in the Vietnamese war are blindingly obvious, and work better when they're not being shoved in your face. All the white folk are ignorant trash, whatever their social standing might be, while the Indians despite a savage massacre of a cavalry unit early in the film, are largely portrayed as noble savages occupying a lofty moral plain unattainable to the whites.
No review of Soldier Blue would be complete without some mention of the violence that created such a fuss back in the 70s. Some of it still packs a punch nearly 40 years later, although more for its shock value than its goriness or explicitness. An Indian boy gets a bullet through the head, a squaw is beheaded, another squaw is raped and mutilated by marauding cavalry. Some of it the beheading particularly look almost amateurish compared to what can be achieved today, but it must have been gut-wrenchingly shocking to an audience back then.