Another weekend with the kid who plays games on my computer and in return
consents to watch a classic movie with me. Today we saw HIGH NOON.

Gary Cooper could just ride out of town on that buckboard with Grace Kelly
at his side, but he knows the town faces an existential threat and he must
do his duty. So he turns the horses around (No doubles — that’s really Gary
Cooper driving that team and Grace Kelly sitting right there beside him
without even a seatbelt!) and back to town he goes to face his sworn enemy,
Frank Miller, who will arrive on the train at high noon, meet up with his
henchman, and come gunning for the man who sent him to jail.

Of course he’s going to need a posse to help him stand up to the bad guys,
but can he count on his fellow citizens for help? Well the answer to that
is the heart of the movie. When push comes to shove, will anybody step
forward and do what is right? It’s amazing and almost amusing to listen to
the various rationales everybody uses to avoid helping. Everything they say
makes perfect sense, it’s easy to understand their point of view, they are
doing what is best, who could expect them to do otherwise? So in the end
it’s Coop alone against the bad guys.

What a tight script this movie has; not a second wasted on unnecessary
scenes or expository dialogue. The Dimitri Tiomkin score is brilliant
throughout – – that earworm theme song will be playing in my head for the
rest of the day – – and the tick-tock sequence as the big hand reaches 12
and the cutting of the shots matches the beats of the music is just
perfection. I don’t know what the 10 best movies ever made are, but I
believe this is one of them.

The kid thought the movie was great. He thought Frank Miller’s henchman
were really good actors and was a little sad that they had to be the bad
guys. At the end, he was grinning ear to ear as Cooper and Kelly were
riding out of town. He commented, “I’m not gonna lie, I liked STAGECOACH
better because there was more at the end after the bad guy was killed.” I
guess HIGH NOON does end rather abruptly, but like I said, it’s a tight
script.

I knew it was a great movie but I admit I had forgotten exactly how much
HIGH NOON deserves to be called a masterpiece.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

On 1/6/2024 5:01 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:
> Another weekend with the kid who plays games on my computer and in return
> consents to watch a classic movie with me. Today we saw HIGH NOON.
>
> Gary Cooper could just ride out of town on that buckboard with Grace Kelly
> at his side, but he knows the town faces an existential threat and he must
> do his duty. So he turns the horses around (No doubles — that’s really Gary
> Cooper driving that team and Grace Kelly sitting right there beside him
> without even a seatbelt!) and back to town he goes to face his sworn enemy,
> Frank Miller, who will arrive on the train at high noon, meet up with his
> henchman, and come gunning for the man who sent him to jail.
>
> Of course he’s going to need a posse to help him stand up to the bad guys,
> but can he count on his fellow citizens for help? Well the answer to that
> is the heart of the movie. When push comes to shove, will anybody step
> forward and do what is right? It’s amazing and almost amusing to listen to
> the various rationales everybody uses to avoid helping. Everything they say
> makes perfect sense, it’s easy to understand their point of view, they are
> doing what is best, who could expect them to do otherwise? So in the end
> it’s Coop alone against the bad guys.
>
> What a tight script this movie has; not a second wasted on unnecessary
> scenes or expository dialogue. The Dimitri Tiomkin score is brilliant
> throughout – – that earworm theme song will be playing in my head for the
> rest of the day – – and the tick-tock sequence as the big hand reaches 12
> and the cutting of the shots matches the beats of the music is just
> perfection. I don’t know what the 10 best movies ever made are, but I
> believe this is one of them.
>
> The kid thought the movie was great. He thought Frank Miller’s henchman
> were really good actors and was a little sad that they had to be the bad
> guys. At the end, he was grinning ear to ear as Cooper and Kelly were
> riding out of town. He commented, “I’m not gonna lie, I liked STAGECOACH
> better because there was more at the end after the bad guy was killed.” I
> guess HIGH NOON does end rather abruptly, but like I said, it’s a tight
> script.
>
> I knew it was a great movie but I admit I had forgotten exactly how much
> HIGH NOON deserves to be called a masterpiece.

Yeah, Fred Zinnemann seemed to crank those out. Meanwhile, a footnote:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082869

On Sat, 6 Jan 2024 17:28:24 -0500, moviePig <pwallace@moviepig.com>
wrote:

>On 1/6/2024 5:01 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:
>> Another weekend with the kid who plays games on my computer and in return
>> consents to watch a classic movie with me. Today we saw HIGH NOON.
>>
>> Gary Cooper could just ride out of town on that buckboard with Grace Kelly
>> at his side, but he knows the town faces an existential threat and he must
>> do his duty. So he turns the horses around (No doubles — that’s really Gary
>> Cooper driving that team and Grace Kelly sitting right there beside him
>> without even a seatbelt!) and back to town he goes to face his sworn enemy,
>> Frank Miller, who will arrive on the train at high noon, meet up with his
>> henchman, and come gunning for the man who sent him to jail.
>>
>> Of course he’s going to need a posse to help him stand up to the bad guys,
>> but can he count on his fellow citizens for help? Well the answer to that
>> is the heart of the movie. When push comes to shove, will anybody step
>> forward and do what is right? It’s amazing and almost amusing to listen to
>> the various rationales everybody uses to avoid helping. Everything they say
>> makes perfect sense, it’s easy to understand their point of view, they are
>> doing what is best, who could expect them to do otherwise? So in the end
>> it’s Coop alone against the bad guys.
>>
>> What a tight script this movie has; not a second wasted on unnecessary
>> scenes or expository dialogue. The Dimitri Tiomkin score is brilliant
>> throughout – – that earworm theme song will be playing in my head for the
>> rest of the day – – and the tick-tock sequence as the big hand reaches 12
>> and the cutting of the shots matches the beats of the music is just
>> perfection. I don’t know what the 10 best movies ever made are, but I
>> believe this is one of them.
>>
>> The kid thought the movie was great. He thought Frank Miller’s henchman
>> were really good actors and was a little sad that they had to be the bad
>> guys. At the end, he was grinning ear to ear as Cooper and Kelly were
>> riding out of town. He commented, “I’m not gonna lie, I liked STAGECOACH
>> better because there was more at the end after the bad guy was killed.” I
>> guess HIGH NOON does end rather abruptly, but like I said, it’s a tight
>> script.
>>
>> I knew it was a great movie but I admit I had forgotten exactly how much
>> HIGH NOON deserves to be called a masterpiece.
>
>Yeah, Fred Zinnemann seemed to crank those out. Meanwhile, a footnote:
>
> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082869

My choice?

"The Day of the Jackal" (1973)

Maybe difficult for younger folks to appreciate given the rather
obscure historical background. But I consider it one of the best of
its genre.