This is sort of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It features some really electrifying location shooting, in Death Valley no less. The chiaroscuro of its remarkable visuals is matched by its ambiguous characters, which add an enriching element to a genre that can thrive on and overly indulge in overly sharp outlines. Unless they don’t, which does go for these Apaches—note obligatory Indian music—or another in a long line of Richard Widmark’s black-hat baddies.
I’m not sure any of this is bad, mind. It’s interesting, steps being taken up, at the same time that they’re being taken back. As is general with popular movies, Yellow Sky is what it intends to be, at the same time that it reflects, often inadvertently, the world going on outside. Standards are shifting, or the always of real adult interaction is starting to impinge upon long-sheltered, long blinkered Hollywood. Note the sexuality. (Note the attack at the corral! Almost as clear, nearly as shocking as a similar sequence in Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring. Though you’re not sure those responsible for the film think of it quite the same…) Note the striking departure and the possibly dispiriting recapitulation with the Anne Baxter/Mike character. Outside the film women and their roles are in flux. Inside the film we get the whole unresolved argument.
This is a great one, with problems, that invites and then demands our engagement, maybe even opposition. Not a bad way to spend an evening!