I was under the impression this film was an adapatation of Shakespeare's The Tempest (the wikipedia page says as much), but I don't see the connection other than an old man and a young woman who's a close relative living in an isolated location.
shareWikipedia says so but without any specifics. Besides the connection you mentioned one could add that the grandfather tries to hide the existence of the rich strike of gold he's discovered from the newcomers, somewhat similar to another more acknowledged The Tempest film adaptation, "Forbidden Planet", in which the father (Walter Pigeon as Morpheus) tries to hide the existence of the Krell from the rescue party led by Leslie Nielsen. Other than that Yellow Sky doesn't seem to have anymore The Tempest connections. Here's an interesting article on Yellow Sky that touches a bit on the Shakespeare connection, including a note to the piece's author from the screenwriter's son.
http://grunes.wordpress.com/2007/06/28/yellow-sky-william-a-wellman-1948/
Indeed, it touches on it to deny it!
It's a mistake to compare Yellow Sky to Forbidden Planet if we're thinking about whether the former is based on The Tempest. That would only tell us things about Yellow Sky and Forbidden Planet rather than Yellow Sky and The Tempest. For instance, it's true that Morpheus and the grandfather are trying to hide something about their surronding, Prospero, their model, is not. He prevents people from learning about him and his magic, but simply by keeping them at a distance with his magic. He is in control and has no need for deception.
Yes the article touches on it and what's said doesn't give a whole lot of credence to a The Tempest connection in Yellow Sky. I wasn't passing the article along as evidence to the contrary.
Why is it a "mistake" to compare Yellow Sky to Forbidden Planet when both have been noted as The Tempest adaptations, whether loosely or not, or one more than the other? It seems that many if not most of this Shakespeare story's adaptations have been widely different ones and play loosely with the "facts" of the original. So I can envision a change being made to the "Prospero character" in either film from preventing people learning about him and his magic by keeping them at a distance, to preventing or hiding knowledge of gold or The Krell from people. Of course it seems that Yellow Sky is even more the looser (if at all!) adaptation of The Tempest.
loosely based.
shareNot even that. There is quite literally no connection either in terms of plot or character to The Tempest other than an old man living with a young woman and a group of outsiders arriving with one of them falling in love with the young woman. That's not being "loosely based" on something; that's just sharing a very basic premise. The old man/young woman relationship here is grandfather/granddaughter rather than father/daughter, the grandfather doesn't deliberately cause the group to get stranded in the town, the granddaughter and grandfather never come into any kind of conflict because she wants him to treat the strangers more nicely, none of the group are forced to go to work for the grandfather, none of the group have a connection to either the grandfather or the young woman before they arrive, the group aren't separated or tormented at all, there's no character(s) analogous to either Ariel or Caliban (at a push one could possibly argue that John Russel's character is mildly Caliban-esque but I'd still say that's reaching quite a bit), etc. Trying to say that Yellow Sky is "loosely based" on The Tempest is like trying to claim that Pinocchio is "loosely based" on Little Red Riding Hood just because both centre around young kids with absolutely no sense of stranger danger and who get themselves into trouble because they refuse to do what they were told by their respective parental figures.
share