Gary Cooper, Lee Van Cleef, Lloyd Bridges, Harry Morgan, and a 21 year old Grace Kelly - how can you go wrong?

Tex Ritter's Do Not Forsake Me is the opening song for Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952). Segments of it are repeated throughout the film. Lee Van Cleef plays it on his harmonica while waiting at the train station. Especially haunting is how the song opens with it's steady impending doom-like percussion.



The film is known for almost being in real time, with many shots showing the time as it inexorably approaches noon. Re-watched it yesterday, and again today with the Howard Suber commentary turned on.

Fascinating info on everything about this film. An example:

The hero doesn't have to look like a hero. I can't even tell you what a hero does look like. It's villains who are cast on the basis of how they look. Because of this, even though it's less than five minutes into the film, we already know how it's going to come out, how they are going to come out. Popular films are like jigsaw puzzles. We know how the final picture will look like when we decide to buy it. What keeps us interested is finding out how the pieces will fit together.

And this, about Helen Ramirez, is great in it's bluntness:

...in spite of her sexual activity, she is a woman who commands respect. Or is it because of this? Like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, if there's a pattern beginning to emerge here, and I think maybe there is, it's that strong women are volatile women, it's also that they're sexy. They know that an added bit of cleavage on the top and an added upthrust on the bottom don't help you breathing much, but they're good for business. They help you look hale and hearty and horny.

He even points out during the steadily rising crane shot toward the end (just before noon) should have stopped before it got so high so you wouldn't see what you see off to the left [ downtown Burbank utility poles ]. Sort of like when Hitchcock caught that kid putting his hands over his ears before the gunshot in North by Northwest.

On many (all) of the interior shots in town you can see outside windows and doors and it almost looks like it's a rear projection it's so light, or a screen was used to lighten the outside scenes, but he tells us it's just L.A. smog.

A great film none the less.

LVC said that being born with beady eyes was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Saw an interview with Van Cleef on YouTube, where he relates how early in his career, the studio insisted he have his nose straightened and he refused. Great actor in so many westerns.

Last time it came on, I had just watched a Seinfeld re-run that had Lloyd Bridges playing Mr. Mandelbaum. Then High Noon came on with young Lloyd Bridges!
If you can find it, Coop did another western well worth watching: The Hanging Tree.