Outlaws in All Directions

A deadly situation in the hostile winter of Wyoming is ambushed by another deadly situation in 1959's Day of the Outlaw. It's an engrossing film that deftly layers one source of tension on top of another and another.

At the centre of this storm is Robert Ryan playing a rancher called Blaise Starrett. The movie gets into it right from the opening credits in which an impressive wide shot of snowy wilderness is inhabited by two horsemen talking about murder.

Blaise is angry about barbed wire fences that local farmer Hal Crane (Alan Marshal) plans to put up. After arguing with Hal for some time, he's now concluded that murdering the man is the only solution. And he can get away with it, too, out here in the wild frontier. He might have to make his case with the few townspeople, though.

On top of this, he's also in love with Hal's wife, Helen (Tina Louise). She pleads with him to spare her husband, offering herself in exchange. But it's all about to lead to a gunfight anyway when Burl Ives walks in with a desperate gang of hoodlums.

Ives plays Jack Bruhn, a former military officer. It's only his command which is restraining his rowdy men from raping the women and razing the town.

Director Andre De Toth skillfully blends all these sources of tension until the last twenty minutes or so of the film when, according to Wikipedia, he ran out of money. The plot suddenly becomes simpler, there are some obvious pickup shots filmed in front of rear projection, and a lot of the subplots are just forgotten about. Still, it's a hell of ride up until that point and Robert Ryan is terrific. It's still a nice rumination on the meaning of murder and heroism in a relative moral vacuum, as Westerns often are.

Day of the Outlaw is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1663

With measured heat the snow amounts to fluff.
A vagrant flake was cold beneath the fur.
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The gentle snow could never kill the sun.
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At dusk, the sickly captain first awoke.
Another flake of frost was like the last.
An island girl returned to build the past.