High Noon

I'd like to recommend the masterpiece High Noon, a film that, in my opinion, easily ranks among the top five westerns ever made. The plot is extremely simple. Around 10:30 on a summer morning, news spreads through a small town in New Mexico that a former convict, arrested by the town's marshal, Will Kane, is set to arrive on the noon train. It's clear he's coming for revenge, as his gang has already arrived and is w…

When we most need each other as human beings we disappear, and we always find reasons to justify ourselves. Tired of his job as sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) decides to hang up his guns and marry the young religious and pacifist Amy (Grace Kelly), then leave the town of Hadleywille and devote the rest of his life to business. Suddenly, the town learns that the criminal Frank Miller, (sent to prison by Kane), has b…

The more I think about classical Westerns, the more I come to the strange conclusion that classical Westerns actually weren't Westerns at all. For most people, a Western is nothing more than a simple action/adventure story set in the Old West. But the films that turned into classical Westerns were anything but simple; even when they fulfilled the action/adventure criteria, they were actually multi-layered dramas, wi…

This post contains all the spoilers and discusses the movie with the assumption that you've seen it. It's not so much a review but more an analysis and commentary on the ideas presented in the film. You can watch the trailer at the bottom of this post. The Credits High Noon is a Western film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado and Ian MacDonal…