Soldier Blue

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Soldier Blue

Directed by	Ralph Nelson
Produced by	Gabriel Katzka Harold Loeb
Written by	Theodore V. Olsen (novel Arrow in the Sun) John Gay (screenplay)
Starring	Candice Bergen Peter Strauss Donald Pleasence
Music by	Roy Budd
Cinematography	Robert B. Hauser
Distributed by	AVCO Embassy Pictures
Release date(s)	August 12, 1970 (New York City)
Running time	112 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

Soldier Blue is an American revisionist Western movie made in 1970 and directed by Ralph Nelson. It includes a fictionalized account of the events surrounding the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in the Colorado Territory.

It was written by John Gay based on the novel Arrow in the Sun by Theodore V. Olsen. It starred Candice Bergen, Peter Strauss, and Donald Pleasence. The title song was performed by Buffy Sainte-Marie.

The movie was controversial at the time not only for its subject matter as a revisionist western, but for its graphic depiction of violence.

Released during the height of the Vietnam War against the backdrop of the courts martial stemming from the My Lai incident, it provided the first motion picture account of one of the most infamous incidents in the history of the American frontier, in which United States cavalry troops massacred an undefended village of Cheyenne and Arapaho on the Colorado eastern plains.

Nelson, who also appeared in the movie in a minor role, pushed the depiction of the violence to explicit levels, showing nudity during rape scenes, as well as "realistic" close-up shots of bullets ripping into flesh in a manner that inspired later directors such as Quentin Tarantino.

The account of the massacre is fictionalized in the context of a longer story involving the escape of white survivors from an earlier massacre of cavalry troops by Indians.