High Noon

From Miller To Post

High Noon
US 1952 Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

High Noon really is one of the all time great American Westerns. It’s been a fair few decades since I’d watched it last (I used to love it as a kid) but I recently bought my father the new Eureka - Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray and, of course, I sat down to watch it with him. I was blown away all over again by it’s stark, black and white photography, the driven Dimitri Tiomkin score with the important song Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling and some interesting actors doing their thing - including Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly (later Princess of Monaco), Katy Jurado, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney Jr (the monster man is billed here as simply Lon Chaney, for some reason), an uncredited Jack Elam and, not forgetting, the screen debut of one Lee Van Cleef... as one of the four men gunning for Cooper’s Marshal character Will Kane.

Actually, I have to say, I didn’t realise this was Van Cleef’s debut until after I watched it again and looked him up. I mean, it’s a pretty rare debut. Okay, so he’s not the bad guy... Frank Miller (played by Ian McDonald) or even the main villain of the three gunfighters waiting for Frank to return to town on the noon train (that would be Frank’s brother Ben, played by Sheb Wooley)... but he has a large portion of the opening credits solo, while he gets ready and joins the other two gunmen to ride to the railway station. He really looks like a villain and, with his scarred face and wild eye reactions, which feature a couple of times in the film, I have to wonder if Sergio Leone maybe looked at this film long and hard over the years before making the actor a household name and using him in two of his famous Spaghetti Westerns. When we think of those Leone movies, we think of the stylised poses, the expressive eyes and the constant waiting and... well, it’s all here in High Noon, long before the Italians started doing it, mostly, better than the Americans. Or at least as interestingly. As the three wait for the train, you will certainly be reminded of Leone’s later masterpiece Once Upon A Time In The West and I would bet this is one of the films he looked at for inspiration.

The plot, if you’ve never seen the film before, goes something like this...

Will Kane (Gary Cooper) marries his quaker lover Amy (Grace Kelly) but finds out that the murderous Frank Miller has just been released from jail (from up north!) and is returning on the noon train to get together with his fellow thugs to gun down the marshall in an act of revenge and then, as implied, take over the town with their hoodlum ways. The town’s folk try to get Mr and Mrs Kane to leave in a buckboard but Kane soon turns back to pick up his tin star (the new marshal doesn’t get into town until the day after) and try to get help to fight off these four cold blooded killers in an attempt to protect the community. Amy doesn’t understand this course of action and tells him she will be on that noon train when it arrives. His former girlfriend, the Mexican Helen Ramírez (played wonderfully by Katy Jurado) also ends things with the marshal’s deputy, played by Lloyd Bridges. She is also set to leave on the noon train.

Meanwhile, in a searing metaphorical indictment of the Hollywood anti-communist black list as experienced by one of the producers about to be put on that list, Kane calls on the various friends and acquaintances in town, only to be met with inaction or untenable conditions to the required help. Bridges character quits over the matter and, even the one man qualified enough to help, changes his mind just before the villains show up. Which leaves just Kane and, as one of two strong female characters in the film, his wife Amy... who shows up to aid him in ways which I won’t spoil for you here if you’ve never seen it.

And it’s a staggeringly good movie. There are probably a fair few moving camera shots in the film but the absolutely beautiful 1.33:1 black and white photography set ups coupled with the pacing make the film appear static and, it has to be said, feel somewhat claustrophobic, as the characters and audience count down the minutes until the train gets into town. Which is something the audience can actually do in this film because, aside from some stuff at the start (and we’re only talking minutes), the entire film is shot... or at least edited... in real time. The various shots of clocks of all shapes and sizes included in the visuals to give you a constant reminder (and surprisingly accurate one, considering how a Hollywood movie is shot) of just how long you’ve got until the shooting starts... underlined by the fairly regular, tick tock percussion of the main title theme which, actually, I think was the first time a movie song had been written into the actual score to add emphasis. Can you imagine a Bond film that didn’t do this? Well, okay, there have been a few of them over the last decade but they’re all the poorer for it.

It’s also a film of mounting tension and unsaid or understated plot points. Nothing is directly said and, though there are some dense sections of scenes heavy with dialogue, a lot of the film plays out like a silent movie in terms of lack of conversation and it’s stronger for it (something else I suspect Sergio Leone learned from films like this). For instance, it’s never explicitly stated that Helen is the marshal’s ex but, as various comments are thrown about a picture is painted that she has history with the main antagonist of the film and you can piece together that the main protagonist, Will Kane, got her out of some problems before hitching up with her himself. It’s something an audience can sew together in their mind, just as Will’s new wife Amy does about half way through the film.

So, yeah, brilliantly minimal but carrying a lot of meaning in a way which almost seems a forgotten art in Hollywood nowadays, where teen audiences have lit a fire which ignorantly blazes through the subtlety of the art of cinematic implication and helped boil things down to a lowest common denominator of clear but stifling explanations and clarifications before the latest heroic incarnations can even get their clothes on. In this way the film is, perhaps, of its time but, honestly, it also feels strikingly timeless, especially with it’s criticisms of the common people on the street failing to do their duty and arguing their way out of harms way by justifying their stance in inventive rhetoric which never, quite, seems all that convincing.

And that’s me done on High Noon. One of the all time great movies that Hollywood ever put out and as entertaining a film as you’re likely to see. It holds up really well over the years and this new Blu Ray from Eureka is stacked with some interesting extras which, alas, I probably wont have time to watch for a very long time, if ever. But, as a recommendation, my dad absolutely loved it too and so do I and I reckon it’s a ‘must see’ for any fans of the art of the medium in general. Do not forsake this new release of an all time classic Western because, honestly, you’d be missing out.

Garden Of Evil

Saddle Rousers

Garden Of Evil
1954 USA
Directed by Henry Hathaway
20th Century Fox/Momentum 
DVD Region 2

I first saw this Western on TV over 20 years ago. I remember I made a point of recording it on video, off air, because I was interested in hearing Bernard Hermmann’s score for this movie within the context of the actual film... so nothing much has changed with my motivation for watching some of these movies in the intervening years then, I guess.

I remember really liking this one but it was probably shown in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio and just dumped like that onto TV by an uncaring channel for a less than demanding UK public. Now the film is available on DVD ( I got this one very cheap at a Film Fair) I can finally see it properly, in its full 2.35:1 approximation of the Cinemascope aspect ratio in which it was shot.

The film starts off with three cowboys played by Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark and Cameron Mitchell, being rowed to shore after the steamer they were journeying on (actually an anachronism in the particular time and place this film is set) breaks down and they are stranded in Mexico for possibly a few days/weeks. About the only thing you can do here is drink at the local saloon bar and watch the lovely, young Rita Moreno sing at you. Unfortunately, Miss Moreno is only in the film for a few minutes, for one scene, to make a point about the characters and the kind of one horse town the three cowboys find themselves in. Then the real story kicks in as Susan Hayward rides into the place looking for volunteers to accompany her back, over the course of a few days ride, to the goldmine she has been working in and help pull her, probably dying, husband out from some fallen debris in the mine. The journey is a dangerous prospect, though, because the mine is deep in hostile Indian territory.

Of course, since they’ve nothing better to do, and because Miss Hayward is offering a large amount of money for their trouble, the three cowboys and a local Mexican pitch in and join her in what starts off to be a kind of road movie in terms of the trip to the mine and the way the relationship between these five individuals develops on the trip.

We have Víctor Manuel Mendoza as Vicente, the Mexican who is covertly marking the path to the hidden gold mine, presumably so his buddies can come back later and take all the gold for themselves. We have the young, proud, troublemaking hothead Luke, played by Cameron Mitchell, who rubs everybody up the wrong way and who you know will be the main villain of the piece until the Indians come along later in the story to take over that tonal role. There’s Richard Widmark playing Fiske, a professional gambler and self appointed poet who talks a great deal and is the perfect verbal crutch for the other male member of the expedition, Hooker. Gary Cooper plays Hooker, and he plays him as the kind of guy who says little but, when he does say something, you have sense enough to quit yer yapping and listen up good... well, unless you’re Cameron Mitchell, apparently. Hooker assumes a quiet sense of authority and leadership for the group without even trying and it’s obvious he’s the real man’s man hero of the piece... and it’s a part he plays really well, as do his fellow actors and actresses... all play their parts convincingly and with gusto.

I never realised, the last time I watched this, just how much of a misogynistic movie this is. Susan Hayward plays Leah, who is bringing a rescue party for her husband but is seen by the men in the party, especially Cooper and Widmark, as an attractive and desirable woman which, obviously, means she’s dangerous and not to be trusted. She is portrayed as a user and someone who is bringing calamity slowly into the path of any man she crosses, something her husband acknowledges when the five of them finally get to him in the mine but, honestly, she’s really not and I found the tone of this film a little strange in this respect. Cooper even knocks her out with a full on punch at one point in the picture... for noble reasons, of course.

The film is fascinating in this manner though. A brooding, psychological study of a powerful woman and the way the men in her life acknowledge and accept her power over them in spite of their recognition and disdain of it. The landscapes have a mostly dark and brooding tone, too, and a lot of the film is talk with no action, to be honest... but when the talk is this interesting, you tend to take notice and listen anyway.

When the bursts of action do come, however, Bernard Herrmann’s deeply brooding score, which is mostly echoing the internal, psychological landscape of the picture in the way that only he could do it, pulls out all the stops and really hits you with the brash, loud, swirling repeat vortexes of music that he does so well. There’s nothing especially subtle about those strong, “balls to the saddle” chase pieces in this film and his notes have your head spinning as he waves his magic baton and the orchestra crashes in for the kill.

It’s been noted, often, that this is Herrmann’s only Western score. Well, that’s not quite true actually. Most people tend to overlook the odd TV Western episode and the stock library of Western music he created for tracking in for various instances in these kinds of shows but, certainly, it’s definitely his only big screen foray into the Western landscape and, typically for Herrmann, this score follows practically none of the conventions of any Western scores you’ve heard before or after. There’s literally a couple of minutes, no more, of standard Americana Western style scoring to punctuate the “lazy ride” kind of music you would expect in one of these oaters, for a saddle bound dialogue between Widmark and Cooper in an early part of the journey to the mine. The rest of the score, though, is either intense and brooding... or a gut churning maelstrom of fast menace for the action sequences. It’s not what anyone would be expecting for a Western score and maybe that’s why Herrmann was not hired to ever score one on film again... but it’s a real kick ass score, for sure, and the main reason why I wanted to watch this movie again.

The dialogue is unbelievably quotable too. Razor sharp lines where everyone who says anything seems to be making a point about something. Cooper’s character, Hooker, says a number of things worth hearing throughout the movie which support his natural authority over the other characters. For instance, when contemplating a very negative dialogue with Susan Hayward, he follows it up on a verbal antidote with, “After all any man says, it's what he does that counts.” When making a decision to stay behind on a narrow cliff edge and fight off Indians single handed, while the remaining survivors of the trip thus far use the time to get away, he states that, “Somebody always stays. Somebody all over the world gets it done.”

At the end of the film, though, Cooper does seem to get a little overly cryptic. He finishes off his memorable one liners with this little gem... “If the earth were gold, I guess men would die for a handful of dirt.” Which is like... um... okay. I might paraphrase and say, if ladies were potatoes then men all over the world would be dying for a packet of Salt N’ Vinegar crisps... but that wouldn’t mean much either, to be honest. But the way Cooper delivers lines like these is priceless and well worth the price of admission alone. I’d love to see this play in a cinema with an audience at some point.

So there you have it. Garden Of Evil. Unusual Western. Brilliant film. Well performed and, I have to say, really nice use of the cinemascope aspect ratio compositionally by a director and cinematographer who really know how to make use of the format... splitting the screen at times so extreme right and left are pitched against each other and not having to worry, like some directors have to, these days... if they choose to work in that kind of aspect ratio... about how it’s going to look cut down at the sides on television screenings (yeah, lots of channels here in the UK still commit many crimes against filmanity of this nature every day). If you’re curious about a moody picture which is essentially a road movie in disguise, where personalities are pitted against each other while uniting in a common cause, then this movie might be worth a look. If you’re into Westerns in general then it’s definitely worth a peak as it seems, to me at least, to be a little different from what you might be expecting from this era of Hollywood Cowboys and Indians. Either way, hitch up your slacks n’ skirts and climb in the saddle with Cooper and Co for Garden Of Evil. You should have a galloping good time.