Or take the actor that Nelson hired to play the Cheyenne chief who falls in love with Candice. Not only does the script demand that the chief treat Miss Bergen as if he were a knight out of courtly romance (when he discovers Candice has given his love beads to Honus, he nobly frees her to find happiness with her white lover), but he's not even acted by an Indian. Instead, he's a muscle-bound Mediterranean with an obviously Italian name. Now, the point isn't that an Italian can't play such a wooden Indian. It's that if Nelson were so godalmighty concerned about the Indian's plight, he might have tried to make as many opportunities available to Indians actors as possible. Seemingly, though, liberalism doesn't begin at home.

HOWEVER, it is in flaunting history and historical truth that Nelson is most outrageous. Soldier Blue is obviously saturated with references to Vietnam. The massacre even includes a My Lai type round-up and murder of the village mothers and children. When the mad major applauds his troops at film's end, he tells them they have made the West "a more decent place to live in." Nelson throws caricatures of imperialism and racism at us. We are expected to fill in the blanks. He's using our disgust with the Vietnam War to sell his film, and he's using the images in his film to reassure us of our righteousness.

And, perhaps it's a measure of our frustration and self-hatred at being powerless to end the war, that last Friday night's audience at the Harvard Square Theatre, sitting there in their two-fifty seats and wasting away three or four useless hours, grabbed at the bait. A couple of the more astute even yelling out, "America is doing that in Vietnam!" during Nelson's specially effected massacre.

Now I know nothing about the Indian wars. Atrocities like the one simulated in the film did occur-to an extent we probably can't even begin to imagine-but I doubt that the rationalizations offered at the time were as simple as those presented in the film. That isn't to say that the murders can be in any way excused. But it is to insist that if we are going to do battle with this godforsaken country it's not enough to work up a counter-image of the Establishment's lies. It's not enough to equate Indian massacres with Vietnamese atrocities. Both are appalling-and if we were fully conscious of their reality, we wouldn't content ourselves with cheering our own self-righteousness in a movie theatre-but each must be confronted on its own, complex terms. Richard Nixon uses cheap arguments by historical analogy to justify his crimes. If we are to resist them, we have to avoid the temptation of answering in kind.

I DECIDED to write this "review" not because a specific film needed criticizing-in any event it's already shuttled out of the Square and you've, luckily, lost your chance to see it-but because we all face the terrible danger of deceiving ourselves. Sure, I'd like to see an end to shoddy, manipulative trash like Soldier Blue, but, as an individual, I see no way of combating it. In which case, I think it much more important that I don't give in to the easy comforts it holds out.

The revolution is never going to be won during the course of a double-feature in a Cambridge movie house. To a large extent, my presence there means that, for me, the revolution never will be won at all. But at least I can claim for myself the partial victory that lies in honesty. I can refuse to applaud Soldier Blue and, by so doing, refuse to applaud my impotent understanding of the need for revolution. For the killing doesn't stop with Nelson's final reel. It continues and it would be criminal for me to pretend otherwise. I may not be able to end the murder in this world, but at least I can force myself to recognize its ongoing existence. Applauding Nelson's film only permits me to pretend that the battle has been won.

Towards the end of Soldier Blue, Honus, having survived the dry heaves, is being led away to a court martial for insubordination, Candice is throwing her lot in with the handful of remaining Indians, and a narrative voice-over is carrying on about a government investigation that declared the whole incident an outrage. (Again, shades of My Lai. That the government could find fault with specific acts that its own policies are calculated to support is the real outrage.) Honus and Candice smile sweetly at each other. You can just sense their Inner Peace. Honus fingers the love beads. Candice brushes her hair out of her eyes.

You almost expect them to flash self-satisfied peace signs at each other. And if they had, I'm convinced that last Friday's audience would have responded in turn. How do you separate such moral smugness from that of Richard Nixon? Wouldn't it have been more honest if we had all left that theatre with marks of our own damnation on our brows? For, by sitting through and by applauding Soldier Blue we once again demonstrate our complicity in the horror. We are still then part of the problem.