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| From http://annyas.com/screenshots/images/1948/yellow-sky-title-still.jpg |
Dir. William A. Wellman
After a group of outlaws, led by Gregory Peck, rob a small town bank,
they escape through into a barren desert wasteland. It sets up a great deal of
promise to keep for the black-and-white shot western. A great amount of time is
spent with just these characters at first. The actors - Peck, Richard Widmark, Robert Arthur, John Russell, Harry Morgan
and Charles Kemper - have a good repartee,
already established that the outlaws can easily gun other down if pushed to it.
The lifeless landscape emphasises the great cinematography on display in the
film and the use of locations, as the journey to an unknown place is physically
felt. One of the biggest virtues of the western, in any country's cinema or
language, is that it requires the use of landscape outside of human comfort,
giant rock formations for characters to hide behind in shoot-outs, vast desert
plains, and grand valleys that are silent and overbearing. Geo-formations that
are as much part of the characters as well as the natural landscape. Unlike how
Meek's Cutoff (2010) forgot to use
the land halfway through to depict the characters' minds physically, the
straight forward western, at its best visually, uses the landscapes to
emphasise the actions and journeys of the characters onscreen. Eventually the
outlaws almost halfway through encounter an abandoned ghost town called Yellow
Sky. Lifeless, the dilapidated saloon and buildings set up what could be a very
good film.
It has some flaws. It suffers
from being too talky. While its idea of the conflicting relationship between
the outlaws and the two remaining people there, an old prospector and his
granddaughter (James Barton and Anne Baxter), engages immensely, it over
depends on dramatic scenes of dialogue to the point of padding its runtime too
much. Also annoyingly it drifts away from what is the most interesting aspect
of Yellow Sky, the granddaughter,
nicknamed Mike, being a tomboy who can handle a rifle, who shows no interest in
the males, and can knock Peck off his
feet with a strong right hook. The relationship between her and the lustful
outlaws gets very uncomfortable, surprisingly sexual and going for discomforting
moments that stick out considering the Hays Code would be in full effect at the
time. The sexual tension is palpable, Mike threatened but still able to exhibit
a toughness liable to take down any of the outlaws. It is only because there
are many of them, pressuring the two occupants of the town for a stash of gold,
that she and her grandfather are in danger, with only the "Indians"
that arrive at one point being stronger than anyone else. It's a shame however
she is not this character to the end. Mike stands out because of Baxter's performance and prescience, so
it hurts a great deal that once the end credits finish Mike will be shoved into
a dress, and be expected to be respectable and "feminine". Even in
terms of placing it in the period it was made, there are American film noirs
that, even if they could be killed or arrested, had femme fatales, in dresses
or not, who stood toe-to-toe with the males by the end with no changes to their
personality. It makes Yellow Sky disappointing
in this area.
Still, the film is good despite
its flaw. Despite being padded in drama, enough of the dialogue scenes feel
like they are worth their existence in the narrative. It's very much a great
ensemble cast working well together; even if Peck stands out as the matinee idol he's surrounded by a cast on
equal grounds to him. Its visually rich and the narrative reaches a good
conclusion even despite the problems depicting Mike. It is not up there with
the best of the classic American western, my personal canon still needing to be
developed, but it makes a solid inclusion for one of the earlier entries within
it.
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| From http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l221n6T6NU1qavi9wo1_500.jpg |
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