Yar, you be here: High Noon (Collector's Edition) > Customer Reviews
High Noon (Collector's Edition) Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 21 Reviews)
What to Do?
In The Divine Comedy, Dante reserves the last and worst ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserve their neutrality. I thought about that provision when recently seeing this film again. In brief, here's the situation. Marshall Will Kane (Cooper) learns that Frank Miller has been released from prison and will arrive on the noon train when it stops in Hadleyville. Joined by others, Miller then intends to locate the marshall and kill him. For various reasons, everyone in town abandons Kane...including his newlywed wife Amy (Kelly) and his deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges). Of course, Kane is tempted to leave with his new bride before noon and avoid Miller...but he doesn't. As high noon approaches, he finds himself alone and facing almost certain death. Cooper received and deserved his Academy Award for best actor. His performance in this film may well have been the best in his entire career. Especially effective use is made of the theme song "Do Not Forsake, O My Darling" co-written by Dimitri and Ned Washington (sung off-camera by Tex Ritter), the key component of Tiomkin's music score which received an Academy Award. The supporting cast is outstanding, notably Bridges, Katy Jurado (Helen Ramirez), and Lon Chaney, Jr. (Martin Howe). Working with Carl Foreman's screenplay, director Fred Zinnemann focuses on what was (more than 50 years ago) a very controversial idea: that otherwise good people would refuse to support their marshal when he and their town are threatened by cold-blooded killers. John Wayne was among those who called this film "Un-American." Several of the townspeople can be accused of cowardice but that is not true of Amy Kane who is a pacifist whose principles require her to oppose her husband's decision to remain. The final scene in the street is unforgettable. Whatever we may think, today, of Kane's decision and of those who oppose it or who remain neutral, we can nonetheless agree that this film still attracts and then sustains our interest; also, that our sense of dramatic tension increases with each passing moment.
High Noon: One Of The Best Of All Time
Gary Cooper is one of an handful of actors whose strong moral compass never fails to ring true. From his earliest films in the silent era right up till his last works, Gary Cooper continually shows the viewer some lessons right out of Acting 101. He makes it look so easy, how to radiate controlled fear while disguising it as bland bravery. In HIGH NOON, Cooper learns a brutal lesson that everyone in the film well knew. In a moment of crisis, you can't count on ordinary folk for help. Ironically, it is the evil ones who are made of the required stern stuff to face a six-gun.
When Cooper, who plays Marshall Will Kane, learns that a recently released from prison convict is returning to town to settle a grudge against him, Cooper tries to enlist the aid of anyone who can help. His friends, his deputy, even his wife fail to recognize the code that forms the bulk of his core. Just as his friends feel they cannot help him, Cooper is just as impelled to the opposite. By movie's end, he meets the bad guys, kills them, and then is stunned to realize that as this external battle has ended, a far more complex internal one is just beginning.
HIGH NOON stands out as a masterpiece, partly due to Cooper, but also to a fine supporting cast which acts as universal lightning rods to attract a swirling torrent of fear, from which not even Cooper is immune. Lon Chaney as the cowardly politician, LLoyd Bridges as the equally cowardly deputy, Katy Jurado as the Mexican woman who once loved Kane but has lost him to Grace Kelly all shine in roles that require them to walk a fine line between bouncing off Kane with just the right force to serve as a dramatic foil and yet not divert the audience's attention for too long as Kane sees who they are and what he must be.
HIGH NOON is no subtle exploration of the different essences that separate hero from villain from coward. This movie delineates in a starkness that matches the black and white filming the need for even a brave man to look within to find the strength that others routinely know is missing in them but take for granted in him.
High Noon Does Not Foresake the Viewer
Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly are spectacular in what is considered one of the best westerns ever made, but should be ranked as one of the greatest films ever produced because it easily transcends its genre.
A morality play that was deliberately produced in stark black-and-white to heighten the mood, the story revolves around Cooper's character, the aging Marshal of Hadleyville who, when the film begins, weds Kelly's character. Cooper has retired and plans to return after his honeymoon as a store keeper because his wife is a Quaker and a pacifist. Plans immediately go awry, however, when it is discovered that a notorious killer whom Cooper had arrested and was expected to have been executed, was instead pardoned. The killer is expected to arrive back in town on the noon train to take revenge on Cooper. Three of his equally savage gang have already arrived and are waiting for him at the train station.
The townspeople urge Cooper to flee with his new wife, but as he starts out of town, he stops, then returns, convinced that he has a responsibility to protect the town and bring the outlaws to justice. Pinning the marshal's badge back on, Cooper tries to deputize residents, but no one will help him and he is forced to stand alone. In powerful scenes, Cooper is forced to ask for help time-after-time but is turned down by residents who refuse to accept civic responsibility or acknowledge the debt they owe Cooper, rationalizing their decision not to act.
Kelly doesn't understand her new husband and threatens to leave on the same noon train if he persists in remaining as the marshall this one last time. Kelly eventually begins to understand what drives Cooper but only after forming an unlikely friendship with his former girlfriend, who teaches Kelly about loyalty and character. Ironically, it is Kelly the pacifist who saves Cooper's life by picking up a .45 and killing one of the gunmen.
In the last scene, the steets are utterly deserted until the gunmen are killed, then the townspeople, who had been hiding, flock around Cooper and Kelly. Without a word, Cooper removes his badge and drops it in the dirt. He and Kelly leave together.
Throughout the movie, the stirring music and the real-time focus of the minutes ticking by until High Noon, serve to increase the movie's tension. The film combines elements of love, trust, duty, honor and courage in unexpected ways that are both thought-provoking and entertaining. The DVD version is crisp and clean, the story as powerful today as when it was filmed. If you have never seen this movie, you owe it to yourself to pick up this DVD.
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | Next Page |
