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Bookmark this pageYellow Sky (1948)
Director: William A Wellman
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A fine Western, harshly shot by Joe MacDonald in Death Valley locations, inevitably conjuring comparisons with Greed and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as six bankrobbers on the run all but die in the desert salt flats before stumbling on a ghost town where a lone prospector (Barton) guards twin secrets: his rich gold strike and his fiercely tomboyish granddaughter (Baxter). Like a pack of wolves, the strangers are soon snarling lustfully after gold and/or the girl, with their leader (Peck) gradually detaching himself as his presence causes the girl to discover her femininity, and hers revives in him something of the man he was before Quantrill's Raiders descended on his home. Intriguingly, Lamar Trotti's screenplay develops WR Burnett's source story with The Tempest in mind, the subtler analogies serving to provide resonances. The situation again harks back to fraternal conflict (the year is 1867, in the aftermath of the Civil War); Yellow Sky also has its malign spirits, a band of renegade Apaches under the uneasy control of the prospector; and the conflict similarly resolves strangely, at its violent climax, into a sense of conciliation. Beautifully cast and characterised, this is one of Wellman's best films.Author: TM
User reviews of this film
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- Charles Raflowitz said...
- Posted on Mar 27 2008 22:24 This is one of my all time favorite movies. wonderful cast and convincing acting.Saw it when I was a teenager in 1948
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Cast & crew
Director: William A Wellman
Producer: Lamar Trotti
Cast: Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter, Richard Widmark, Robert Arthur, John Russell, Henry Morgan, James Barton, Charles Kemper full cast
Genre(s): Westerns
Duration: 98 mins
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