Rent Yellow Sky (1948)

Western Allegory. - Yellow Sky review by Steve

This is a companion to William Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), sharing the same writer and some of the cast, as well as its laconic style, abstract studio sets and absence of music. There is a different photographer, but similarly stark, ominous high contrast black and white. It's a fascinating, schematic heist narrative, from a story by WR Burnett.

Six men (Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark, et al) rob a bank and are chased into the salt desert of Death Valley. Rather than give themselves up, they continue into the barren, hostile wilderness. As their resilience gives way the outlaws stumble on a ghost town occupied by an old gold prospector (James Barton) and his rugged grand-daughter (Anne Baxter).

 It unfolds like a medieval parable. The men destroy themselves as their desire for the gold and the woman open up their already significant divisions. It's really an anti-western. The men are ruined by their individualism, and the only survivor is Gregory Peck, the gunman who develops the capacity to compromise and not be ruled by impulse.

Predictably Peck plays the tough leader who develops some integrity and Widmark is the cruel, mercenary killer. There's little dialogue, just the visual impact of the derelict shacks huddled in the desert as the men betray each other. It's the sombre mood and melancholy cynicism that linger. It's one of the first of the western noirs to emerge after WWII, and one of the best.

Worth the Sunburn - Yellow Sky review by griggs

William Wellman clearly wasn't in the business of making anyone comfortable with this one. It's brutal in every direction — heat, drought, sweat, double-crosses — and none of it lets up for long, though there's more polish here than the sun-baked setup lets on.

What's really good is the casting against type. Gregory Peck spends most of the runtime shiftier and harder to read than I'm used to seeing from him, and it works — the good guy you can't quite trust is a nice trick. Richard Widmark, on the other hand, is exactly as menacing as you'd hope, no surprises there. Then Anne Baxter walks in and takes the whole thing over, out-toughing both men without breaking a sweat. James Barton, stealing scenes as the old prospector, barely seems to be trying. And Harry Morgan only needs a line or two before that voice gives him away — you half expect him to start bellowing for Radar.

Wellman frames one shot straight down the barrel of a gun — a small, precise piece of camera work you don't expect from a film this lean, and sharper visual thinking than the plot ever lets on.

The story keeps wrong-footing you, even when a few beats are easy to call early, and the finale goes for broke and lands it.

Still, a western that earns its bruises. Worth the sunburn.