High Noon

For my at home movie I watched Hang em’ High directed by Ted Post. It is considered a spaghetti western that was made in America. In comparison to the film we watched in class, High Noon directed by Fred Zinnemann. These two westerns had many similarities and differences. From differences in how the movie was actually shot, to the similarity of how both of the main characters are loners, these two movies connect all over on many different levels.

High Noon was the story of a very brave man, Will Kane played by Gary Cooper, which is giving up his Sheriff position to become a homemaker with him wife. Just when they are leaving to start their new life together, there is news that four outlaws are coming back into town to seek revenge on Kane. High Noon, the title of the movie, is exactly when the four outlaw characters are meeting up in the town, and with the time getting closer, Kane realizes that his friends are harder to find. Almost every person he asks to help him deserts him, and the few that say they will help either back out at ht last minuet or are incompetent. Even his new wife decides she will leave this town on the noon train, with or without him. When “high noon” does finally come Kane has no one to help him and he has to go and battle these four outlaws by his self. At the last possible second with some help from Helen Ramirez, an ex-love character played by Katy Jurado, she helps Amy realize she can save her husband and if she really loved him she would. Amy runs back into town and helps her husband kill two of the four guys, without her he may not have won the gun fight. At the end of the movie Sheriff Kane throws down his badge in front of the whole town in disgrace, he doesn’t even need to say a word, and he and Amy ride off together to start their new life.

In the movie Hang em’ High, Clint Eastwood plays the main character Jed Cooper. A group of men accuse him of stealing cattle and killing one of their neighbors. When he can’t prove to them his innocence, they hang him. It just so happens that a U.S. Marshall was in the area and he saved Cooper’s life. Then the Marshall brought him to the judge to see if he is guilty. Eventually, it was discovered that Cooper was innocent, and had bought the cattle from a criminal who killed the owner then sold the cattle to him. Cooper was finally released, but he now wanted revenge on the men who tried to lynch him. The judge tells Cooper to give their descriptions to one of his marshal’s and they will try to find them, but Cooper feels that it’s not enough. The judge warns Cooper about taking the law into his own hands. When he told the judge that he was a formal law man, and he knows the law, the judge offers Cooper a job as a Marshall, and he takes the job. After accepting the job, he goes around and tried to gather up all men that tried to hang him. Along the way he has many side adventures, and tests the limits of right and wrong. In the end after a good old fashion western shoot out, Cooper goes back to town and decides that he’s done, or so we think. The judge made him realize that what he really wanted was revenge on the men, not a “Happily ever after” ending with Rachel.

These two