As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(Shakespeare: The Tempest)
Yellow Sky (1948) is an utterly brutal Western, which asserts that, when it is not mitigated, human nature – or at least how it is expressed in the context of the American West – is nothing but greed, violence, jealousy, fear and suspicion.
A gang of bank robbers in their desperate effort to outrun a posse are forced to enter the desert – the film is shot in Death Valley – where, on the verge of death, they fight over the last few drops of water, the beating sun and their weakening bodies turning them insane, until they see a town, Yellow Sky, which although isn’t a mirage turns out to be a ghost town, deserted, its shops, hotels and bars abandoned and collapsed.
This one last cruel trick seems to have sealed their fate, which is to die of thirst and exhaustion. Only for a beautiful young woman to appear out of nowhere, whose motivation in directing them to water is not to save them, however, but to drive them out from Yellow Sky as soon as possible. But why the ferocity in her determination to get rid of them? Is it simply the fear of a lone woman being confronted by several smelly, brutish, leering men who’ve appeared out of nowhere? Or is she hiding something? What is such a beautiful woman doing in such a godforsaken place?
The outlaws discover that the woman is in Yellow Sky with her grandfather who they surmise is a gold prospector. Dreams of wealth and sexual gratification now overwhelm the men, even as they fall out as to who is going to rape the woman first and whether they should take all the old man’s gold or split the treasure with him. The men’s morality is put to the test. How evil are they? After an adult life of robbing and murder, taking what they want without remorse, is there any residue of conscience left in them that will prompt them to spare the woman from rape and let the old man keep some of his hard-earned wealth?
William Wellman directed this masterpiece, Gregory Peck is Stretch Dawson, the conflicted leader of the gang, Richard Widmark, his ruthless no. 2 (or alter ego, if you prefer) and Anne Baxter plays Constance May, the object of the outlaws’ desire. The taut script and spartan dialogue full of bitterness and irony was written by Lamar Trotti and based on WR Burnett’s novel, Stretch Dawson. Indeed, Yellow Sky bears all the hallmarks of Burnett’s numerous novels and screenplays, Little Caesar, Scarface, High Sierra, This Gun for Hire, The Asphalt Jungle – avarice, rapacity, hubris, the thin veneer of civilisation:
‘The worst police force in the world is better than no police force… Take the police off the streets for forty-eight hours, and nobody would be safe, neither on the street, nor in his place of business, nor in his home. There wouldn’t be an easy moment for women or children. We’d be back in the jungle…’ (The Asphalt Jungle).
Yellow Sky’s template is Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with Anne Baxter’s character as Miranda and Grandpa as Prospero.
In the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, Tony Howard explains the relationship between The Tempest and Yellow Sky:
‘William Wellman’s Yellow Sky turned The Tempest into a harsh post-war Western where a gang of criminals (bankrobbers replacing aristocrats) stumble on an isolated old man and a girl. The elemental metaphors are reversed. Shakespeare’s sea gives way to thirst: fleeing across a desert, on the brink of death they discover no magic island but a ghost town where a prospector and his granddaughter guard water and gold. Wellman focuses on the girl, who is constantly threatened by rape but protects herself with tough talk and a rifle, and on the Caliban question: can any of these degenerates be redeemed?’
This one last cruel trick seems to have sealed their fate, which is to die of thirst and exhaustion. Only for a beautiful young woman to appear out of nowhere, whose motivation in directing them to water is not to save them, however, but to drive them out from Yellow Sky as soon as possible. But why the ferocity in her determination to get rid of them? Is it simply the fear of a lone woman being confronted by several smelly, brutish, leering men who’ve appeared out of nowhere? Or is she hiding something? What is such a beautiful woman doing in such a godforsaken place?
The outlaws discover that the woman is in Yellow Sky with her grandfather who they surmise is a gold prospector. Dreams of wealth and sexual gratification now overwhelm the men, even as they fall out as to who is going to rape the woman first and whether they should take all the old man’s gold or split the treasure with him. The men’s morality is put to the test. How evil are they? After an adult life of robbing and murder, taking what they want without remorse, is there any residue of conscience left in them that will prompt them to spare the woman from rape and let the old man keep some of his hard-earned wealth?
William Wellman directed this masterpiece, Gregory Peck is Stretch Dawson, the conflicted leader of the gang, Richard Widmark, his ruthless no. 2 (or alter ego, if you prefer) and Anne Baxter plays Constance May, the object of the outlaws’ desire. The taut script and spartan dialogue full of bitterness and irony was written by Lamar Trotti and based on WR Burnett’s novel, Stretch Dawson. Indeed, Yellow Sky bears all the hallmarks of Burnett’s numerous novels and screenplays, Little Caesar, Scarface, High Sierra, This Gun for Hire, The Asphalt Jungle – avarice, rapacity, hubris, the thin veneer of civilisation:
‘The worst police force in the world is better than no police force… Take the police off the streets for forty-eight hours, and nobody would be safe, neither on the street, nor in his place of business, nor in his home. There wouldn’t be an easy moment for women or children. We’d be back in the jungle…’ (The Asphalt Jungle).
Yellow Sky’s template is Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with Anne Baxter’s character as Miranda and Grandpa as Prospero.
In the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, Tony Howard explains the relationship between The Tempest and Yellow Sky:
‘William Wellman’s Yellow Sky turned The Tempest into a harsh post-war Western where a gang of criminals (bankrobbers replacing aristocrats) stumble on an isolated old man and a girl. The elemental metaphors are reversed. Shakespeare’s sea gives way to thirst: fleeing across a desert, on the brink of death they discover no magic island but a ghost town where a prospector and his granddaughter guard water and gold. Wellman focuses on the girl, who is constantly threatened by rape but protects herself with tough talk and a rifle, and on the Caliban question: can any of these degenerates be redeemed?’