Yellow Sky

[poliphilo]

For some people it's shoes. For Ailz it's glass rabbits. For me it's DVDs. I bought a whole pile over the festive season. Mainly at the moment I seem to be buying great, neglected movies of the 1940s. 

Like Yellow Sky. Which is a western shot entirely on location in Death Valley. Oh, but it's beautiful. Greg Peck's in it and he's beautiful. Ann Baxter's in it and she's beautiful too. Apparently nobody liked Greg Peck (I think because he gave himself filmstar airs and graces) so when he came to do a fight scene with Ann Baxter she knocked seven bells out of him. The director is William Wellman- whom nobody seems to have heard of in spite of him being one of the greats. And when I say beautiful I mean as beautiful as anything by Kurosawa and that's as beautiful as it gets.

 Westerns get taken for granted. I don't know why. But it's a truism (finally disproved by Unforgiven) that no-one gets Oscar-nominated for working on a western. Yet some of the greatest American pictures are westerns.  And John Ford- who is probably the greatest American-born director of all (with the exception of Orson Welles) specialised in them. OK,  some Westerns are famous- Stagecoach, Shane, High Noon- but for every Western that made a splash there are ten others equally good that only the geeks have heard of. Yellow Sky for instance. Did I mention that it's beautiful? Well it is; black and white photography doesn't get more gorgeous than this.  Six horsemen riding in procession across the gleaming salt flats; the shadows of panicking horses thrown across a wall during the final (off-screen) shoot-out: these images ought to be iconic-  and  If Yellow Sky belonged to any other genre they would be.

Comments

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

How about "Will Penny" or "The Ox-Bow Incident"? Good stuff.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Gregory Peck WAS a well loved actor until he ended his career with such drivel as the *Omen* movies.

Red River is my favorite western of all time. John Wayne, Montgomery Clift...what more could one ask for?

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

I think the least-known great Western must be "The Naked Spur." Jimmy Stewart's performance in the final scene is astonishing, yet it never shows up when people discuss or screen excerpts of great acting.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Oxbow Incident is another of "Wild Bill" Wellman's movies.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was surprised to learn that Greg was unpopular with his colleagues. I've always liked him.

My favourite western is 3.10 to Yuma, with Van Heflin and the sadly under-rated Glenn Ford.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Jimmy Stewart always makes it look so natural.

In my book he's the greatest actor of the 20th century.

[creakiness.livejournal.com]

The landscape of Death Valley is really something else. A few years ago I drove through there to take photos (http://creakiness.livejournal.com/29901.html#cutid1), and I've been wanting to get back there ever since.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Those are terrific.

What is that stuff- is it mud or solid rock?

[creakiness.livejournal.com]

They're actually the ends of giant underground salt crystals that have been eroded by rain.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

When we were children, my brother and I went almost every Saturday afternoon to the Royal Theater, where they showed awful science fiction (my brother hid under the seat during "Island of the Tarantulas," or something like...), and often we saw Westerns. To me, they were always the same--men jumping off their horses onto tree branches, Indians gathering on the cliffs. But we loved them all.

Tony, please do me a favor and order Baraka, which is a most powerful documentary without words showing magnificent photography of the earth and its people in such a haunting way--it is truly a religious experience (or was for me!)