1952 Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Will Kane, the sheriff of a small town in New Mexico, learns a notorious outlaw he put in jail has been freed, and will be arriving on the noon train. Knowing the outlaw and his gang are coming to kill him, Kane is determined to stand his ground, so he gathers a posse from among the local townspeople.
Gary Cooper Grace Kelly Thomas Mitchell Lloyd Bridges Katy Jurado Otto Kruger Lon Chaney Jr. Harry Morgan Ian MacDonald Eve McVeagh Morgan Farley Harry Shannon Lee Van Cleef Robert J. Wilke Sheb Wooley Jack Elam John Doucette Ted Stanhope Lee Aaker Guy Beach Larry J. Blake John Breen Tex Driscoll Herschel Graham Paul Kruger William H. O'Brien Roy Bucko Russell Custer Nora Bush Show All…
Le train sifflera 3 fois, 12 Uhr mittags, 12 Uhr mittags - High Noon, Тачно у подне, Sol davant el perill, Al punt del migdia
John Wayne called this the most unamerican film he’d ever seen so you know it’s good as hell
Imagine the suspenseful opening scene from Once Upon a Time in West, but as an entire movie.
Fred Zinnemann's High Noon is a classic & revolutionary movie of the Western genre. Tense, suspenseful & solid drama, which is an allegory for McCarthyism and the Hollywood Black List. Gary Cooper renders one of his best performances on the screen.
a bit lecture-y by design but i love the conceit of tracing a real-time hour of a man reckoning with a town's history and people. there's a montage near the end of this that climaxes on an image of an empty chair that is as exciting as an action scene and it only works because of the way information is slowly doled out in these character conversations filled with doom and regret. just good stuff. also by the end of the film i was literally singing "oh my daaaaaaarling" along with the theme so i guess it has to be a good movie
It's Marshal Will Kane's wedding day. He's marrying Grace Kelly, and turning in his badge for good. He's about to ride off into the sunset, and live the quiet life. Right before the honeymoon is about to start, word comes to town Big Bad Frank Miller is on the noon train, and guess where he's heading? Yeah, Frank Miller is pissed, and wants revenge against the Marshal. His posse of henchmen are waiting for him at the train station, and they're coming to town to raise some holy hell. Now, Will Kane could say "fuck it" and haul ass with his new bride, but Marshal Kane ain't programmed that way. He's gonna stay. He's gonna fight. Even if he's fighting…
What are we without our community? A sheriff who cleaned up the streets long ago has his hour of need when that filth comes running back, but the town he's cared for doesn't care back and is content hanging him out to dry in the sun-bleached streets as noon draws near.
Nobody can help. Nobody will help. It seems like everyone wants to help but they all have their own terms and conditions that he's unable to to sign off on. Somehow it's nobody's fault, and each time the sheriff solemnly nods, as if he not just understands but expected their answer, and each time again he walks out the door with nobody there behind him. Finally, one of the…
Growing up, I would often catch fragments of the classic American westerns on TV. As I wasn’t a big fan of the genre, I rarely lingered. High Noon, to me, seemed synonymous with American Western, but I was shocked that I hadn’t seen a single frame of it.
Classic titles, classic opening, and classic theme set me up to think this was going to be just another good Western. Sheriff Will Kane is in the process of wedding his sweetheart Amy Fowler, and just about to hang up his badge, when the news comes of the release of Frank Miller. A man Kane sent to the gallows for heinous crimes, but escaped the noose on a technicality. Miller is arriving…
Homicidal tyrant with delusions of moral superiority puts entire town in jeopardy by stubbornly refusing to give up his arrogant, selfish pursuit of vengeance.
Spoiler Alert: after making a gigantic mess he ends up ditching the town anyway to run away with his girlfriend.
The screenplay for High Noon is written by Carl Foreman, a left-wing intellectual blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to answer questions from the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In this sense, the story of the sheriff who is cowardly left alone by his fellow citizens, at the mercy of a gang of outlaws willing to take revenge on him, is often read as a metaphor for the fate of all those people betrayed and abandoned by their own community. Fred Zinnemann confidently directs a western that respects the unity of time and place, staging 85 minutes of the town of Hadleyville, in the New Mexico territory. During this time the spectator takes part in the anguished waiting for the noon…
A truly great Western, Fred Zinnemann's "High Noon" works on both an intellectual and visceral level. Allegorical, theme-rich, and equipped with progressive suggestions, Zinnemann's film is also a wire-tight and tense piece of filmmaking. With its finely drawn characters, simply straightforward story, and meditation on fear, cowardice, and taking action, "High Noon" is a grand experience.
Gary Cooper's Will Kane is freshly wed and retiring from his post as US Marshall. Before he and his wife can leave their small frontier town to celebrate their nuptials, Kane learns that an old nemesis in returning to town on the twelve o'clock train. Kane must race against the clock to build a posse and protect the town from the returning criminal and…
For John Wayne to hate it, High Noon must have been a pretty groundbreaking film. It's not only that the "hero" Gary Cooper pleads with the citizens of Hadleyville for "brave" deputies to ostensibly eliminate a potential threat, an ex-convict who the film implies was released from a date with the gallows by "northern" politicians along with three gunmen which include the likes of Lee Van Cleef himself but also Robert J Wilke, but the citizens, in church on Sunday no less, show a side of the west in this sordid depiction, that Wayne may have found reprehensible. It's rotten through and through. the citizens are not stupidly going to volunteer, and they share with us some pretty interesting reasons…
As the hour draws to a close we have a complete understanding of our relationship with the town and its personal history. How a man can be singled out for his role within the town, their support or not but when the time comes the badge comes off.
I first watched High Noon as a child and it didn't leave any particular impression on my young mind. I was undoubtedly unable to appreciate what makes it such an important piece of American cinema.
Allegedly developed as a critique of McCarthyism, High Noon is an engrossing exorcise in tightly-wound suspense, featuring a protagonist who defies the traits of the typical Western hero. Will Kane doesn't fall victim to the jingoism sometimes found in his counterparts, and while I don't think the piece is as "un-American" as John Wayne believed, it is certainly more intellectually charged than most Hollywood fare of the 1950s.
