Day of the Outlaw
André de Toth’s gorgeous black-and-white noir-tinged western, shot in 1959, is a terrific example of early genre interrogation that precedes the more commonly celebrated revisionist films of Sam Peckinpah, Clint Eastwood or Robert Altman. Here, quarrelling homesteaders on a small snowbound Wyoming settlement find their bickering is unimportant when a band of outlaws, fleeing both the cavalry and a howling storm, ride in and seize control.
Filming on a shoestring budget, and in freezing conditions, de Toth makes full use of the elements as the locals desperately scheme to overcome their captors. A fistfight in the snow is filmed mostly in sublime long shots that serve to illustrate the ultimate insignificance of combatants who are dwarfed by a desolate, overwhelming landscape. Things come to a head only when Robert Ryan’s curmudgeonly hero realises nature’s savage indifference and bravely endeavours to lead his foes straight into her path. [Tom Grieve]
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