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“The most celebrated Western Hollywood ever produced!” – J. Hoberman, The New York Times. Click here to read entire review “A contender for Best Western in Movie History returns this week in all its glory!” – Pauline Kael, New Yorker. Click here to read entire review “Fred Zinnemann’s quintessential 1952 Western. You’ll be devastated by this!” – Logan Hill and Bilge Ebiri in New York Magazine. Click here to read entire review |
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 (1952)
“Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin’, on this, our weddin’
day” — but there’s more than nuptials ahead for retiring
sheriff Gary Cooper: the noon train’s bringing revenge-minded Ian
MacDonald back from the pen, with three gun-packing henchmen  —
including Spaghetti Western star-to-be Lee Van Cleef — as his welcoming
committee. But of course his Quaker bride Grace Kelly knows he’s got
to stay and fight it out, and the townspeople will stand with him at the
showdown — or will they? On just about everybody’s checklist
for Greatest Western Ever Made (and #1 of all time for presidents Reagan,
Bush II... and Clinton), and at the same time a biting metaphorical indictment
of McCarthyism (screenwriter Carl Foreman was blacklisted soon after). It’s
also a scintillatingly suspenseful screen experiment in “real time”
(the screen story spanning only the same 85 minutes as the film, the effect
reinforced by repeated close-ups of inexorably ticking clocks), and, in
the cold sweat forming on the hero’s haggard face (Cooper used the
bleeding ulcer he suffered during the shoot to help him win his second Academy
Award), one of the screen’s starkest portraits of fear and loneliness.
Seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay,
winning for Cooper, Editing, the legendary score by Russian expat Dimitri
Tiomkin, and the Tiomkin/Ned Washington theme song warbled by Tex Ritter.
This 35mm print has been struck directly from the original negative, giving
a look distinctly superior to any previous prints, including those of the
original release. (Normal release prints are struck from an intermediate
negative to avoid wear and tear on the original.) In other words: we always
knew Cooper was sweating — now you can count the drops! Produced by
Stanley Kramer and photographed by Floyd Crosby, father of rock legend David. |
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A PARAMOUNT RELEASE |
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