As a director of westerns, native Texan KingVidor is best remembered-infamously remembered-for Duel in the Sun (coming November 16). But tonightwe pair his first entries in the genre: the silent The Sky Pilot (his second surviving feature) and theearly-sound Billy the Kid. If no grand claims can be made for The Sky Pilot, it's seldom less than strikinglyunusual. Partly it is simply its good fortune to have been made before the genre fossilized into solemnity,but it deserves credit for an unconventionality rare even for 1921. A then-familiar William S. Hart-stylecowboy/preacher conflict looks imminent when bow-tied, soft-jowled John Bowers saunters on his muleinto the "primitive, godless" town to announce his calling as a "sky pilot" (seaman's slang for minister,common in early westerns). But, instead, the film plays out a round-robin of male and female heroism-asatisfying switch from the invincible cowboy. Throughout, it is more interested in the ecology of ranch lifethan the myths of gunfighting. Notwithstanding a ludicrous plotline involving secret passageways forsmuggling cattle and its right-wing dream of a stable labor-force overlorded by a paternal businessman,The Sky Pilot creates a convincing West. This came at a high price for Vidor. His tiny independent Hollywoodstudio, "Vidor Village," was bankrupted by the company waiting out blizzards on the Truckee Riverlocations (doubling for Canada). Scott Simmon