The Naked Dawn
Capsule by Dave Kehr
From the Chicago Reader

A remarkable Edgar G. Ulmer effort (1955). It's one of his few films in color, and perhaps the most perversely underpopulated western ever made--it seems to be taking place on Mars. Arthur Kennedy is an outlaw who drafts a homesteader and his wife (Roy Engel and Betta St. John) as his accomplices in a series of robberies. The film contains what may be the most memorable of the feverish, weirdly desexed solo dance numbers Ulmer was fond of inserting in his plots, performed here by one "Charita." Francois Truffaut later cited this picture as the inspiration for Jules and Jim--you can see what he means, but just barely. 82 min.

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