High Noon

As I was exercising last night, I rewatched High Noon, probably the first movie I remember from my childhood. I first saw it sometime between the ages of 2 and 8, and it burned some things indelibly into my psyche.

It remains one of the greatest artistic products and purest expressions of American culture.

Most striking is how it conforms to the traditional dramatic unities, as prescribed by Aristotle millennia ago. The movie lasts one hour and 20 minutes; the time covered in the movie lasts one hour and 20 minutes. All around one act and one action: that train rolling in at 12 noon.

One would have imagined these rules for drama really only mattered for the stage, and were about creating the willing suspension of disbelief. In fact, one would expect them to be a bad idea for the screen, because they artificially limit the visuals and so the visual interest. Not so: they apparently matter just as much in a movie. High Noon is not the only classic movie that attends to them: Night of the Living Dead and Twelve Angry Men also come to mind.

It is also of course, true that you can make a great movie, or a great play, without them. Shakespeare proved that.

Nevertheless, High Noon proves that there is some kind of magic here: all else being equal, if you can conform to the three dramatic unities, you are adding the weight of a spiritual sledgehammer to your performance.

As for American culture: if and to the extent that it ever forgets the essential message of High Noon, it has lost its soul.