YELLOW SKY

US, 1949, 95 minutes, Black and white.
Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark, Anne Baxter, Harry Morgan.
Directed by William A. Wellman.

A well made standard western of the late forties. Director is William Wellman, noted for his action films from Wings in the twenties through Beau Geste in the thirties and quite a number of westerns. Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark were at the height of their 20th Century Fox careers at this time and are effective. Anne Baxter was a popular heroine. The film is stark and direct and is an entertaining example of its kind.

I. How successful a western was this? Why? What basic ingredients of the western did it use? How successfully?

2. How important was the theme of greed? How did it fit into the adventure aspects of the film, robbery, trek through the desert, the siege of the old man and the girl, the Indians, the greed for gold? All the motivations were important in this film? Why? The personalities of Peck, Widmark, and Baxter?

3. How did the film create its atmosphere? Men after the Civil War needing something to do, settling down, turning to crime? Why were Jim and Dude involved in crime? Why involved together?

4. How evil were the group ? As persons, why were they together? What bonded them? How much greed? the importance of the sequence of the robbery? Jim's handling of the robbery contrasting with Dude? Deaths? the chase?

5. How important were the sequences of the endurance through the defeat? what they went through? What did this reveal about them? their need for survival, their greed?

6. How did Mike and the grandfather contrast with them? Living in a deserted town? Looking for gold? Yet not hoarding it? victims of these robbers? Where were audience sympathies?

7. What did Stretch intend to do? Why did he change his mind? What appealed to his better nature?

8. The significance of the scene, the wounding of the grandfather? the death, the role of the Indians and Stretch dealing with them?

9. The growing contrast of character between Jim and Dude? The struggle of good and evil? the influence of good? the influence of their past? The appeal to goodness and truth? the inevitability of conflict? How well handled was this dramatically in the film?

10. The nature of the final fight out? The use of darkness and suspense? The fact that good would win over evil?

11. Was the restitution of the money too contrived? Or did it round out the themes of the film succeesfully?

12. Was the happy ending too conventional?


13. What values does a western Like this portray? About the American west? America itself and its history, good and evil, greed and mutual love?