Ralph Nelson
Soldato Blu

The Sand Creek river is sadly famous, it was even sung about by the great Fabrizio.

"Soldato Blu" of 1970 is the film that, along with "A Man Called Horse" 1969 by Eliot Silvertein and the immortal "Little Big Man" 1970 by Arthur Penn with a magnificent Dustin Hoffman, revolutionized the western.

By then, the great heroes of the past were all dead and buried in the conscience of the Vietnamese defeat, heroes could even be mortal like in "Easy Rider" and superheroes were already burdened by daily problems, and for this, we must thank the great Stan Lee, the inventor of superheroes with super problems.

But what makes "Soldato Blu" excel?

What makes it different from so many cowboy films?

Is it perhaps the tobacco pouches made using the scrotum of killed Native Americans?

Is it perhaps the mass rapes?

Is it for that contemptibly mutilated fetus?

Is it for that head severed by a saber that seemed to explode in cinemascope?

Is it for the screams and cries of the children?

Is it for the cannons against arrows and knives?

Is it because when I saw it for the first time, I was shocked. The conquest of the West was an orgy of blood. Millions of bison sacrificed on the altar of progress, human lives destroyed by lead and alcohol. The film starts with a massacre by the Cheyenne and Ketty watches resignedly: "we’ll have to wait quite a while. They’ll stay there to mutilate those corpses for hours and hours".

Ketty, who was kidnapped by the Cheyenne at a young age, recounts the events from the Native American perspective and flees horrified by the massacres perpetrated by the blue soldiers. Honus, on the other hand, is a young soldier who ultimately finds himself bewildered obeying absurd orders blindly. It will be the gentle Ketty who opens his eyes. Ketty will be the real "man" in the film. The movie is a succession of blood and violence someone will call it "low butchery" yet how much politics we can find in it.

A film that, whether we like it or not, is a watershed; in cinematic history, it will remain too, "Soldato Blu"! After this movie, the western genre will be renewed, after this and after the already mentioned Little Big Man and A Man Called Horse.

Cast: Candice Bergen, Peter Strauss, Donald Pleasence, John Anderson, Jorge Rivero

When the last tree is cut down, the last bison is killed, the white man will realize that he cannot eat money.

De André

They took our heart under a dark blanket
under a dead small moon we slept without fear
it was a twenty-year-old general
blue eyes and the same jacket
it was a twenty-year-old general
son of a storm

there's a silver dollar at the bottom of Sand Creek.

Our warriors too far on the bison trail
and that distant music became ever stronger
I closed my eyes three times
I found myself still there
I asked my grandfather is it just a dream
my grandfather said yes

sometimes fish sing at the bottom of Sand Creek

I dreamed so hard that blood came out of my nose
the flash in one ear in the other paradise
the smallest tears
the biggest tears
when the snow tree
bloomed with red stars

now the children sleep in the bed of Sand Creek

When the sun raised its head between the shoulders of the night
there were only dogs and smoke and overturned tents
I shot an arrow into the sky
to make it breathe
I shot an arrow into the wind
to make it bleed

find the third arrow at the bottom of Sand Creek

They took our heart under a dark blanket
under a dead small moon we slept without fear
it was a twenty-year-old general
blue eyes and the same jacket
it was a twenty-year-old general
son of a storm

now the children sleep at the bottom of Sand Creek

Fiume Sand Creek 1981 from the album known as "indiano"