HIGH NOON

HIGH NOON

SOME of the best films are the simplest. The storyline in High Noon has few complications. Each scene – right from the opening credits – goes straight to the point. Each scene moves the story along as the clock on the wall relentlessly ticks off the minutes to the arrival of the noon train in the remote frontier town of Hadleyville.
The film opens to the strains of Tex Ritter singing the theme song, Do not forsake me, oh my Darling. Under the rolling credits, at the same time as three desperadoes converge on the town’s railway station to check that the noon train is on time, the retiring Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is in the local courtroom, marrying Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly in her first role) a gorgeous Quaker girl.
It’s 10:35. News filters through that a notorious killer, Frank Millar, (Ian MacDonald) has been released from prison. He’s on the noon train and his declared aim is to meet up with the rest of the gang and kill Kane – the man who put him away – just as soon as he gets into town.
At first Kane and his new bride hitch up a horse-buggy but a short distance out of town he turns back. He has never run away from anything yet and isn’t about to start now. His new bride doesn’t understand his resolve to defend his town and his honour. She flounces off, declaring her intention to board the noon train herself – with or without Will. It’s up to him. Amy is only the first to desert him.
The rest of the film moves in real time as the clocks wears its way round towards noon. Everywhere Kane goes to seek help he is rebuffed by townspeople who always have good personal reasons for leaving him to his fate. His deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges) has a thing for his ex Helen Ramirez, (Katy Jurado) a local businesswoman. He feels guilty about taking over from Kane in her affections and resents the fact that Kane hasn’t appointed him as his successor. Kane will just have to do without him.
The tension builds up as Kane travels from pillar to post to get support to take down Millar and his gang. The judge, the respectable church-going folk – all the good people who cheered him on when it cost them nothing – make their excuses and walk away or hide in their homes. The awful truth dawns on Kane. He is going to have to fight alone.
The train arrives. Kane’s wife sees the gang heading into town to kill her new husband and gets off the train. Her place is by her man. Kane manages to kill two gang members. Amy, valuing her man over her pacifist principles kills the third, only to be taken hostage by Millar. She struggles as the two men face one-another down. They open fire. Millar falls. Kane’s shot has taken him down. The townspeople come out at cheer the man they refused to help. In contempt he throws his Star of office into the dust. He and his wife and ride off without looking back.
Not surprisingly, High Noon did well in the 1952 Oscars. Cooper won best actor. The movie also won best song for Do Not Forsake Me, best musical score and best film editing. It was controversial, though. John Wayne, who had turned down the role of Kane, called it the ‘most un-American’ film he had ever seen, probably because the screenwriter Carl Foreman had once been a member of the American communist party. It was thought to be a thinly veiled allegory on many of the great and the good who looked the other way when Senator Joe McCarthy was blacklisting communist sympathisers and other leftists. Perhaps so. Nevertheless, many others admired it for the Marshall’s emphasis on courage and duty despite the odds against him.

The Third Man

THE THIRD MAN (1949)

Directed by Carol Reed from a story by Graham Greene

Running time: 104 minutes Cert: PG

Carol Reed's The Third Man is generally regarded as a British movie masterpiece. The British Film Institute voted it the Number One British Film of the Twentieth Century. It is set among the bombed-out buildings and sewers of postwar Vienna: a city divided like Berlin by the occupying powers and home to black-marketeers, spies, refugees, racketeers and all sorts of shady characters.

Holly Martins (Joseph cotton), a writer of pulp westerns has been invited to come to work for his old school friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). When he arrives in Vienna he discovers that Harry has not met him at the airport for one very good reason. Harry is dead; killed in a motoring accident. Martins is just in time to attend the funeral. At the funeral he meets a British officer, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) and notices another mourner weeping freely - an attractive actress called Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli).

When he tries to find out more about the accident Martins is at first confused. Harry was killed instantly. His dying words were about Holly.. Two men helped him. No, there was a third man..Everyone he questions seem to be hiding something. They are as guilty as hell. The people Martins question only arouse his suspicion. Something odd is going on. Perhaps Harry's death was no accident? Perhaps it was murder!

The awful truth dawns on Martins that his old pal was not a very nice man. When the major tells him That Lime was a thief, a murderer and a dealer in smuggled diluted penicillin he can't believe it. Not Harry. Not his old friend. However, the evidence mounts up and he has to accept the unbelievable truth. Harry Lime was a corrupt, murdering gangster, loyal to nobody but himself.

After this shock, he gets a greater one. In Anna's flat he strokes her cat which pulls away from him. She tells him that it only liked Harry. The cat leaves the flat and cuddles up to a mysterious stranger lurking in a nearby doorway. Martins later notices this man and the cat as his feet when he too leaves the flat. He challenges him. Suddenly a light from a nearby balcony throws a beam of light on the man's face. Martins is astonished. It's Harry Lime! Harry's not dead after all.

Martins soon discovers that he hasn't heard the half of it. Lime is a real nasty piece of work. In a showdown in a ferris wheel, he cold-bloodedly dismisses all his crimes. “Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if any one of those dots stopped moving forever. If I offered you £20.000 for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man, free of income tax. It's the only way to save money nowadays.” Martin is disgusted and is faced with a dilemma. Should he shop his old friend?

This film has it all. Dark shadows, stylish cinematography, paranoia, a love triangle, a haunting musical score from Anton Karas on the zither and more twists and turns than you'd expect even from Albert Htichcock. Carol Reed's masterpiece was written by Graham Greeene, the author of The Quiet American and Our Man in Havana.

The Third Man won only one Oscar in 1950 for Robert Krasker's cinematography; shot on location amidst the genuine ruins of postwar Vienna. The current DVD release has a superb print of the film with a few fascinating extras. There's archival footage of Anton Karas, the composer of the zither score that permeates the film, a Lux radio play of the movie, theatre trailers a Harry Lime radio play starring Welles and a photo-gallery.

ON THE WATERFRONT

On the Waterfront (1954)

Running time: 108 minutes

Director: Elia Kazan

I could've had class. I could've been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum which is what I am. Terry Malloy

Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a former boxer, does a bit of work as an errand boy for Johnny Friendly (Lee J Cobb) – a vicious local gangster and a corrupt trade union leader. Terry is riddled with guilt because of his role in luring a potential court witness to his death. His sense of guilt deepens as he falls in love with the dead man's sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint).

Malloy's conscience troubles him, and he distances himself from Friendly and the boys. He realises that Johnny Friendly and the corrupt local union branch oppresses the ordinary dock workers much more than any bosses. The code against speaking out against the union leadership is enforced with brutal violence. Joey Doyle was thrown of a roof after Malloy betrayed him. Another man has a crane dump its load on top of him while working in a ship's hold. Friendly and his henchmen decide whose face fits, who gets the work in a degrading line-up each morning and who is left behind to starve.

Worried about his loyalty, Friendly orders Terry's brother Charley Malloy (Rod Steiger) to kill him. Charley can't bring himself to do it and is himself murdered on Friendly's orders. Terry then combines with Edie and a local priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden) to resist union intimidation and bring Johnny Friendly to justice. This sets the scene for a showdown between the two men; the corrupt union boss and his former flunkey.

This film won eight Oscars. Deservedly so! Unlike his character, Brando has class. He was not only a contender but a winner. The director, Kazan was hated by many of the Hollywood liberal set for testifying to the House Un-American Activites Committee on the extent of communist infiltration of the media. This powerful film amounted to the case for the defence when it came to informers: the informer, not a hero but a troubled man struggling with his uneasy conscience and trying to do the right thing.