He tells the genuine tragedy of Sand Creek

A caravan, wild screams and gunshots in the canyons: this is a western. Released in 1970, "Soldier blue" Ralf Nelson nevertheless remains an atypical work. He tells the genuine tragedy of Sand Creek. November 29, 1864, the Cavalry of Colorado perpétua a barbaric massacre in a cheyenne village. Soldiers assassinated children and the elderly, the bodies were dismembered, skulls scalped, girls raped. Ralf Nelson tells this shameful episode of the conquest of the West through the eyes of a committed young naive and a blond who has spent many years among the Indians and not know to which it belongs.

"Soldier blue" done with "Jeremiah johnson", "little big Man" or "Willie Boy" of the great humanist westerns of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The "flower power" took the larger Hollywood genre to revisit the roots of the country. The myth of the heroic civilizing cowboy disappears for the benefit of a clash between the purity of the Indians and an army of bloodthirsty louts. Like any good historical film, "Soldier blue" speaks of the past to the present. Filmed in the war of the Viet Nam, he refers to the tragedy of My Lai, Vietnam village razed by the IM in 1968. In a sense, it also anticipates Abu Ghraib and the bloody streaks that always accompany the scroll to the sound of the Bugle.

Censored out, the film is now proposed in its entirety. Critical, powerful and committed workforce, "Soldier blue" also paradoxically appears as a love song to America. "This is my country", said the song of the generic. And the melody married fresh rivers, flaming sunsets, the contrast shattering Earth and heaven: the poetry of the horizon or the promise of a better world. Despite everything.

The end of a world

A better world, Sam Peckinpah, descendant of an Indian Chief, did not believe there a second. His is rage and desolation. Witness, "The wild Horde", western twilight of unprecedented violence, released in 1969. In the aftermath, Peckinpah turns "One named Cable Hogue", to be performed on the tone of the comedy is in remains not less deeply disillusioned.

Because there is no water for three, Cable Hogue is abandoned in the desert by his two companions, Bowen and Taggart. After four days of walking, while he implores God to come to his rescue, his wish is fulfilled. Scraping the ground, he discovers a hole of brackish water. Best, a few metres away, he noticed traces of care. Definitely, it is blessed of the gods! On the first pass, he learns that the water point, it was discovered in the middle of nowhere is located between two remote towns of 60 miles. Its first customer refusing to pay the 10 cents he seeks it using the lead. The second, a false érotomane preacher and drinking dry, advised him to go to emergency save its concession in good and due form, otherwise it is would stick as soon as the new successfully in the city. For $ 2.5, Hogue purchased two acres of land where its miraculous source before you install a relay of care there is located.

Forgetting, a moment, the revenge anime to Taggart and Bowen, the business of Cable Hogue thrive. It falls even lovers of Hildy, a prostitute in the big heart, which, driven out of the city by the bigots, will come to settle some time at home. After that, she left the trade of its charms to San Francisco. But one day, Hildy reappears dressed as a Princess, in a beautiful car with driver. Hogue includes that the good old times of stagecoaches is completed and that the water hole is soon more worth nothing. The oil age is coming. And Cable Hogue, last witness of the myth of the border, will be the first victim.