Women We Love: Grace Kelly

High Noon (1952)

Gary Cooper as Marshall Will Kane. The time is 11:50.

"Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! ... But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come."
-Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot


Fred Zinnemann's High Noon may be one of the most perfectly constructed films ever made. If ever there were a doubt that film was art, high art, in the sense of Da Vinci and Shakespeare, surely films like High Noon must put to rest any such dispersions. Like a tightly constructed sonnet, nothing is missing, and nothing is superfluous.