Tuesday, May 24, 2022
High Noon
- Who's watched: M & G
- Mentions: *1*
- Commentary: This is one of those movies neither Mom nor I had seen but it was one of my father's/her husband's favorites. So, one day I found a classic video rental store in Prescott (What a find!) and we spent the weekend watching 'old' movies, including our first viewing of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and this movie, with which we were both taken. I didn't realize it was such a dark story. As well, I found myself enjoying Gary Cooper, who's performance in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was a little too over the top for me. Plus, one of the disturbing things about Capra movies is that the same actors keep showing up, playing essentially the same roles...Beulah Bondi, for instance; and the guy who plays drunken Diz, Thomas Mitchell, also plays addled Uncle Billy. It's eerie...like, you're not watching a movie, you're spying on another dimension. Not true for this movie. Thank the movie gods.
Although I already have a post title review tagged above for this movie, out of curiosity, I wondered why I hadn't used Roger Ebert's review for it. Turns out, he didn't do a full review of the movie, although he mini-reviewed it on his PBS show and mentioned it in other pieces a few times. In answer to a question on his site about the whys and why-nots of his list of "Great Movies", Roger had this to say about the movie: "I recently screened "High Noon" (No. 33) as a candidate for my Great Movies series, and rejected it as, frankly, just not a very good film. I chose Howard Hawks' great Red River instead."
Many reviewers disagree with Roger, such as the one whose review I linked to the title of this post. For fans of High Noon, the immediately previous link is to a four star review of the film.
Update 11/17/2021: This post was originally published February 6, 2005. It was one of the accidental deletions that occurred, which is covered in this post.
Update 5/24/22: Yet another post re-published on 4/09/09 that "disappeared" and I had to recapture.
Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Gary Cooper Will Kane Thomas Mitchell Mayor Jonas Henderson Lloyd Bridges Dep. Marshal Harvey Pell Katy Jurado Helen Ramirez Grace Kelly Amy Fowler Kane Otto Kruger Judge Percy Mettrick Lon Chaney Martin Howell Harry Morgan Sam Fuller Ian MacDonald Frank Miller Sheb Wooley Ben Miller Lee Van Cleef Jack Colby Robert J. Wilke Jim Pierce
Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
Release Date: 1952
Directed by Fred Zinnemann.
Labels: dad-favorite, dramaC, film-noir3, melodramaC, revisionist-western, thomas-mitchell
