I don't much care for the anhistorical story MGM attaches to this telling of the last days of William Bonney, but I do enjoy William Skall's and Leonard Smith's handling of the Technicolor cameras. They demonstrate that Monument Valley did not belong to John Ford, and Technicolor has a quality that it seems to have lost after the War.: the drama and beauty of black, particularly in the interior shots. Tall, dark Robert Taylor, dressed in black and riding a black horse draws the eye amid the tans and browns in a way he did not in his black-and-white movies, nor in his later Technicolor features, which seem to concentrate more on the spectacle of color.
Perhaps that's why I see a pansexual subtext to the camera's fascination of Taylor, a homoerotic frisson that flew right past the Hays Office. There's something erotic about the way Ian Hunter invites Taylor to stay the night, or the way he beds down with Brian Donlevy. Death has long been a metaphor for sex, and Taylor's shooting Gene Lockhart in the back, or his own death at Donlevy's hands can be viewed as not-too-subtle metaphors.
Perhaps that's why I see a pansexual subtext to the camera's fascination of Taylor, a homoerotic frisson that flew right past the Hays Office. There's something erotic about the way Ian Hunter invites Taylor to stay the night, or the way he beds down with Brian Donlevy. Death has long been a metaphor for sex, and Taylor's shooting Gene Lockhart in the back, or his own death at Donlevy's hands can be viewed as not-too-subtle metaphors.