Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by vocalion (A) on January 06, 2004 at 10:26:49

In Reply to: High Noon - a Western that leaves you ill posted by Victor Khomenko on January 05, 2004 at 14:00:40:

IMO, "High Noon" was the most perfectly conceived film ever made. Everything that is hot, stark, steely, and high-keyed came together so wonderfully. The climate in which the film was shot, the plot, the photography, the historical setting, the actors - in short, EVERYTHING congealed to produce the perfect movie of it's type. The only respite from the tension, as "Western" tradition dictates, might possibly be found in the resolute face of a certain old flame (ideally, a face of Mexican descent). "High Noon" almost had to be a Western because of the hot, dusty sort of bareness that the image conjured up for the public. Onto such a new, yet hot and dry, landscape the temperament of society would naturally reflect the desperation induced by sodbusting efforts all too recent for comfort, and ill-forgotten. So now, the director is totally free to blow into the midst the fiercest and most annoying little dustdevils imaginable, one right after the other. He needed the associated heat, sweat, and the flies. No other director I know of could conjure up more emotion with a shot of a single item, such as that beautiful courthouse chair that once held the convict. It's funny how that bedeviled chair almost quivers in the light, and yet it is so still... That's why I love this movie which was not really a "Western". Rather, it was some demonic form (The Wicked Witch of the West?), or genre, looking for a human skin in order to wreak havoc among the sons of God. That human skin just HAD to be the Old West, in this case.