DESERT FURY: Technicolor me bad

I came for the cast and stayed for the Technicolor. DESERT FURY is an initially overwhelming visual experience which almost makes up for the increasingly soggy storyline.
The impact of the opening scenes is the visual equivalent of a smack in the face. The colours are so vivid, and the colour composition of each frame so artfully designed that the effect is akin to 3D without the need for glasses. It's a stunning sensation that I do not recall experiencing with any previous Hollywood film made in colour.
It's a darn good job there's so much to look at because it rapidly becomes clear that the story is a drag - an overheated melodrama about tough guys, bad girls and even badder mothers who are all so intertwined that I soon lost track of who felt what about who and who had done what to who.

Lizabeth Scott - the poor man's Lauren Bacall - is the focus of all the raging hormones. She's the bad girl who might be good if only someone would show her some genuine love. She's never had it from her casino owning hard-as-nails, selfish mother Mary Astor; she won't take it from local deputy sheriff Burt Lancaster (sporting an unfeasibly large amount of hair on his head), and she fools herself into believing she's going to get it from gangster John Hodiak. Passions are heightened by the relentless heat of the sun beating down on the scene of the action, the small desert town of Chuckawalla, Nevada.
Released in 1947 DESERT FURY was only Lancaster's third film and it does little to build on his initial impact with 'The Killers' and 'Brute Force.' His is the least interesting of the three main characters yet he still manages to turn in a more convincing performance than Hodiak, whose success as a leading man remains one of the great mysteries of 1940s cinema. Scott had just more film than Lancaster under her belt but had already perfected the slightly schizophrenic good/bad girl persona she was to play out repeatedly in the following decade.
The real reason to tune in - other than the sumptuous Technicolor - is fourth billed Mary Astor sinking her teeth into the part of a butch mother from hell. Sadly she had already begun her slow steady descent from leading lady to leading lady's mother to bit parts, but she gives the role her all, effortlessly running rings around her fellow cast members, and reminding everyone(to no avail, alas) just what a great actress she was.
Even she though, can't save DESERT FURY from turning into an interminable hour and 36 minutes. With it's early promise, stunning use of colour and the presence of Miss Astor this is definitely a case of the parts being greater than the whole.