1. If there's one thing I begrudgingly enjoy about summer heat waves, it's that they keep me indoors and I don't for a second feel like I should leave the house.
These days, staying in the house, for me, means one thing: Vizio University is in session.
I'm creating the current Vizio University film studies course syllabus day to day. My current course of self-education will, before long, include The Last Picture Show. For now, though, I am continuing to reach back many years to Westerns made before The Last Picture Show to get a better idea of the ways of telling a story and the movie making methods that Peter Bogdanovich might have inherited.
Today's feature: High Noon (1952).
For my entire movie watching life, I've heard High Noon referred to countless times and, for some reason, I've never watched it. This is true, actually, for many Westerns.
High Noon is famously unique in that it tells its story in "real time". The movie focuses on a ninety minute period of time in the frontier town of Hadleyville, as the town awaits the return of released convict Frank Miller, an outlaw arriving on the noon train bent on killing the Marshall, Will Kane, for having "sent him up" to prison for murder. The movie chronicles these ninety minutes, one after another, as they take place.
So, the repeated image of the clock, of the pendulum swinging back and forth as the clock's hands move forward, much like the mythical sword of Damocles, recurs. The nearly minute to minute crawl of time not only creates building tension, but heightens our sense of inevitability that the momentous confrontation/showdown between Frank Miller and Marshal Will Kane is fated to occur.
2. Okay. The movie's plot moves like a slow train toward its climax, but at the heart of the movie is Marshal Will Kane's moral dilemma whether to stay in Hadleyville and face Frank Miller or leave town with the woman he married at the movie's outset.
He stays. He journeys from one social gathering and one home or business to another in Hadleyville looking to round up a posse to help him confront Frank Miller and Miller's three outlaw companions.
My studies at Vizio University today taught me that High Noon works as a political allegory opposing the Hollywood blacklisting occurring at the same time as High Noon's production.
On a broader scale, my view is that the movie explores, through allegory, not only an individual's fidelity to his conscience, but also examines whether, in a time of crisis, no matter the time period, members of one's community are willing to work together to support that individual's moral decision. When do members of a community rally behind an individual faced with a life and death decision to act on his/her principles and when and why do members of the social body decide not to be of help? We see this conflict acted out all the time. High Noon locates it on the Western frontier in what appears to be a point in time in the distant past, but the movie's portrayal of this dilemma rings true universally.
3. When I was younger, I sometimes watched two or three movies in a day. I surely had the time to watch another movie this afternoon or evening, but I decided High Noon was enough.
So, I watched a whole bunch of YouTube videos of Martin Short playing the part of talk show host Jiminy Glick. I could hardly stop. Everyone of them killed me off.
I also love to watch Martin Short's appearances on David Letterman. Debbie and I enjoyed having a party this evening. I enjoyed a couple gin and tonics enhanced by fresh-squeezed mandarin orange juice and I played, at the end of our party, a fifteen minute clips of the time Martin Short began his chat with Letterman by acting like Dave had announced his retirement from show business when, in fact, it was Regis who had made this announcement. He then told a so bad it was good story about when he as a med student and he capped off his appearance with a Vegas styled performance of a song describing rehab as the key to re-igniting a slumping celebrity career. It was hilarious.
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