Saturday, October 5, 2013

High Noon

The movie High Noon is an interesting movie even though it was in black and white.  The movie is about a man, William Kane, who is the sheriff of a small town and when he was going to retire to move away with his new wife he hears about a guy who is coming to town who is not a good guy.  So he decides to stay in town in order to protect his town.  His wife says that she will not wait to see if she will be a widow so she gets a train ticket headed out of town.  When the train gets into town and Frank Miller, the bad guy, gets off the train he is after Kane because he is the one who put him in jail.  Kane tries to round up townspeople to help him defend his town but with little success, no one wants to fight or risk dying.  When Miller gets into town a fight rages, guns drawn and shots ring through the town as Kane’s new wife, Amy Fowler, runs through the city trying to see if her husband was still alive.  Kane takes down Miller’s posse and eventually takes down Miller in the middle of the street. 
            In High Noon there are a few key aspects that stuck out to me, they included the acting, the lighting, and the music played.  These three aspects help make up for the movie being in black and white.  Without these strong aspects in the movie it would not have been as good because the black and white would have been distracting.  I thought that the director did a good job of convincing the audience, me, that the plot was real and possible.  When we think of westerns we picture what would happen in this movie, an antagonist comes to town to seek revenge and a battle surges ending with the protagonist prevailing.
            The acting was great in my opinion.  Every character did their job in order to bring the film together.  Kane defending his city with his emotions focused on bringing security to the town.  His wife with her anger towards her husband for deciding to stay in town to risk his life. When Kane went around searching for help to fight against Miller and everyone turned him down they all seemed to have a look of fright on their face and even in their voice.  When Kane goes to the church to get help and the preacher says that he doesn’t want to send his people out to fight he sees very concerned for the wellbeing of them but there is also a sense of worry about what is coming in the future.  All of the actors did their job well to convince me and make me believe the actors were real. 
            The next aspect is the lighting, when a movie is in black and white it is hard to keep the lighting right in order to be sure that everything can be seen by the viewer.  Along with that, since most of the movie was shot outside with the bright light, the director had to make sure that the contrast was right so that there wasn’t too much glare.  The movie was shot well enough so that I could clearly distinguish what was going on and who was doing what.  In the scene where Miller is holding Kane’s wife hostage and they were out in the street, it was a little bright making it harder to see the action but it wasn’t enough to make the lighting poor.
            The last aspect is the music that was played during the film.  Music is a very important part to a movie because, even if we don’t realize it, sound plays a huge role in bringing the piece together.  Without sound it can be hard to make the scenes dramatic and make the viewers feel the suspense in the movie.  I thought that the music played in the movie was good for the scenes.  When there was action going on they used drastic differences in volume and types of sound in order to heighten the suspense and make the viewers wonder what is next to come.

             Overall I thought that High Noon was well put together and a very interesting film.  The fact that if was in black and white had no effect on how I viewed the movie because the key components were strong enough to keep my attention.

No comments:

Post a Comment