As in George Stevens’ Shane, the place of action of Andre De Toth’s demented Western Day of the Outlaw is once again the state of Wyoming and the contested land of the homesteaders. Day of the Outlaw was one of Westerns at the twilight of the studio era in which anything might go, and director De Toth, the creator of two infamous idiosyncratic films — the groundbreaking 3D House of Wax and the naturalistic Sterling Hayden-starring noir Crime Wave — here firmly established his pedigree as one of the maverick directors such as Nicholas Ray for whom boundaries proved only elastic consequence.
Filmed on a shoestring budget, Day of the Outlaw proved to be an enduring touchstone for the directors of the French New Wave; it came to exemplify De Toth’s resourcefulness around budgetary limitations and the (here often snow-strewn) difficulties of the shoot. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Andre De Toth’s Day of the Outlaw in a Dual Format edition.
