High Noon (1952)
I will never understand the popularity of High Noon, when there were so many other better westerns made in the 1940s, 1950s, and even that very year. It’s a mediocre-at-best western with a simple story, a talentless leading man, a miscast leading lady, boring direction, and an overrated theme. What’s the big deal?
Gary Cooper has just quit being a marshal and married a Quaker: Grace Kelly. Besides the offscreen affair between them, I can’t see any other reason why she was cast. She’s as unconvincing as a Quaker as Marilyn Monroe would have been. In her first leading role, she’s incredibly green and looks scared to death to be acting in a major motion picture. Cooper finds out a group of bandits are headed into town looking specifically for him, he puts his badge back on and tells his nonviolent wife that he’s got to face them for a showdown at noon. Grace doesn’t support him and threatens to leave him, and the rest of the town abandons him, refusing to help because the bad guys are too scary. The deputy marshal, Lloyd Bridges, the mayor, Thomas Mitchell, and the judge, Otto Kruger, also turn their backs on Cooper.
The last hour of the film is shot in real time to mirror his growing anxiety, and it’s supposed to be incredibly tense as he waits alone for the gang to show up, but it always leaves me cold. There are so many other great westerns out there! Riding Shotgun, starring Randolph Scott (the real king of westerns) and Silver Lode, starring John Payne, were both made in 1954 with extremely similar themes to High Noon. They were both infinitely more exciting and better movies. Neither one of them is as well remembered as their predecessor. I could list dozens of westerns made before 1952 that were better, but that would take another couple of paragraphs. This wasn’t even the first movie to be filmed in real time; Robert Wise tackled that breakthrough in 1949’s The Set-Up.
High Noon just isn’t suspenseful. You’d think, given the little they had to work with, the filmmakers would have insisted on casting someone who could put expression into his lines. Gary Cooper seems to be in a lot of suspense worrying about remembering his lines, but not about facing a shootout in the wild west.
Want to watch it? Click here to watch it on ok.ru. And thanks "Classic Movies Kristine Rose" for posting!
More Gary Cooper movies here!
Gary Cooper has just quit being a marshal and married a Quaker: Grace Kelly. Besides the offscreen affair between them, I can’t see any other reason why she was cast. She’s as unconvincing as a Quaker as Marilyn Monroe would have been. In her first leading role, she’s incredibly green and looks scared to death to be acting in a major motion picture. Cooper finds out a group of bandits are headed into town looking specifically for him, he puts his badge back on and tells his nonviolent wife that he’s got to face them for a showdown at noon. Grace doesn’t support him and threatens to leave him, and the rest of the town abandons him, refusing to help because the bad guys are too scary. The deputy marshal, Lloyd Bridges, the mayor, Thomas Mitchell, and the judge, Otto Kruger, also turn their backs on Cooper.
The last hour of the film is shot in real time to mirror his growing anxiety, and it’s supposed to be incredibly tense as he waits alone for the gang to show up, but it always leaves me cold. There are so many other great westerns out there! Riding Shotgun, starring Randolph Scott (the real king of westerns) and Silver Lode, starring John Payne, were both made in 1954 with extremely similar themes to High Noon. They were both infinitely more exciting and better movies. Neither one of them is as well remembered as their predecessor. I could list dozens of westerns made before 1952 that were better, but that would take another couple of paragraphs. This wasn’t even the first movie to be filmed in real time; Robert Wise tackled that breakthrough in 1949’s The Set-Up.
High Noon just isn’t suspenseful. You’d think, given the little they had to work with, the filmmakers would have insisted on casting someone who could put expression into his lines. Gary Cooper seems to be in a lot of suspense worrying about remembering his lines, but not about facing a shootout in the wild west.
Want to watch it? Click here to watch it on ok.ru. And thanks "Classic Movies Kristine Rose" for posting!
More Gary Cooper movies here!