The New Pictures, Dec. 13, 1948

Yellow Sky (20th Century-Fox) is set in 1867, when Civil War veterans had to get along without Government psychiatrists or handbooks on the peculiar ways of civilians. It is the story of a nice farm boy (Gregory Peck) and his wicked companions (including Richard Widmark) who are at loose ends and suffering from postwar disgruntlement.

One day, apparently more maladjusted than usual, they rob a bank. Then, to get away from their Problems, they flee across the salt flats, where it is so hot a man will exchange a quart of whiskey for a single drink of water. On the other side of the flats, they run smack into the middle of a routine formula for a 1948 western movie. The formula includes a trigger-happy heroine (Anne Baxter) who coyly takes pot shots at her hero’s head.

Long stretches of Yellow Sky fret over the question of who gets the girl. Since Gregory Peck is in the picture, the problem is not likely to worry anyone in the audience over the age of five. The subsidiary problem: Who will get that gold

Grandpa (James Barton) and the heroine have hoarded up in a deserted mining town ?

Grandpa is a cagey old coot who sleeps sitting up in bed, with his hat on and a sheet over his face. He figures to outsmart the bandits, and his chances improve when a tribe of Apaches rides into town. The Indians are great friends of Grandpa’s, and are given to carving up his enemies; but this time they hold a powwow with him, all get drunk and roll around in the waterhole. Next morning, they ride away without shooting an arrow or lifting a scalp. In a way, it is a historic moment in westerns.

Hills of Home (MGM) is a double helping of cinematic sweets that should please children of all ages. It is not merely the story of the fine, faithful dog (Lassie) who rises to last-reel heroics, but it is also about a lovable, crusty old country doctor (Edmund Gwenn) who dotes on unpaid fees and night calls in bad weather.

These two themes stretch taffylike through a series of medical crises in a 19th Century Scottish highland glen. Lassie tags along to help Dr. Gwenn with almost everything short of major surgery. When her master himself is in a bad way, Lassie even fights down her deathly fear of water to swim to his aid. This feat, however, does not deprive Dr. Gwenn of a long, sticky death scene designed to put a heavy Scottish mist into every open eye in the audience.

M-G-M has framed this holiday confection in pretty mountain backgrounds attractively daubed in Technicolor. Occasionally the talk of the characters has a tangy humor that seems more authentic than the variety of burrs with which it is spoken. But the tang cannot hold out for long against the heavy flavor of molasses.

The Decision of Christopher Blake

(Warner) is an attempt to make a movie out of Moss Hart’s play Christopher Blake (TIME, Dec. 9, 1946). The plot is supposed to be a compassionate exploration of the tortured spirit of a twelve-year-old boy who must choose which of his divorced parents to live with. The play was overburdened with limitations, but it was conscientious to the end. The movie adds to the play’s shortcomings a few of its own, and cheapens the theme with a pat Hollywood happy ending.

The Broadway version was occasionally perceptive in its boy’s-eye view of things, but the picture had to hew to filmdom’s own primer of juvenile psychology. The boy’s parents (Alexis Smith and Robert Douglas), whom Playwright Hart originally endowed with some integrity, now seem to be merely petulant puppets in the boy-loses-girl phase of a standard film romance. The movie even fails in its treatment of what might seem to be its best bet: the fantasy—scenes picturing young Chris’s anxious, self-pitying daydreams. Unless handled with great skill, fantasy comes off badly before that most literal of duplicating mechanisms, the movie camera.

Young Ted Donaldson, 14, gives a good performance as Chris and Cecil Kellaway does an ingratiating job as the divorce judge.