High Noon . . .

Although this film is also mainly a technical piece, I say at the beginning that I give it a higher grading than "Manon." The central character kane, is interesting; he is not the perfect hero, but ha weaknesses like you or me.

Stanley Kramer is again the producer and Fred Zinnerman the director. They and the musical director, have collaborated to give a film of almost continual high tension. Beginning with the gathering of the outlaw's gang, the film penetrates the atmosphere of heat and dirt, to reveal the apathy of the citizens and the urgent appeal for help of the sheriff as the hands of the clock move round to high noon. Director Zinnerman uses such devices as re-repeated shots of clocks, and the train lines which will carry Frank Miller, the outlaw. His fine sense of editing, his Judgment as to the exact length of a sequence, is all reinforced by composer Dimitri Tiomkin's High Noon ballad (for the film's theme look at Its words), and the rhythmic beat of his music High noon approaches. Gary Cooper fully enlists our sympathy, and with dread we watch the hour hand move around to twelve.

Part of my sense of dread was a doubt as to whether the last gun-fight would sustain the brilliance of presentation that I had already seen. It did not. The crucial part of the film has nothing more to commend it than any ordinary western. This gun fight's "Choreography" la full of conventional steps and turns. The director has planned it with great care, but it is the touch of the artist that is missing. The film, however, is not altogether an anti-climax. When Kane throws his sheriff's badge into the dust, the psychological and moral implications return.

The film has it's short-comings. Not only the last sequences, but also the sometimes too obviously contrived reasons for keeping the citizens out of the streets, so that the sheriff will have to fight the outlaws alone. But in spite of these faults, and the director's objective attitude, "High Noon" remains a western with a difference. There is a sense of character and genuine excitement.

Grading * * * *