High Noon 4K UHD Is the Pick of the Week

Legendary director Fred Zinnemann’s 1952 classic High Noon was not your typical Western. It was perhaps the first anti-Western, one that keeps the cliches and hallmarks of the genre at bay, at least until the final reel. It’s more of an existential film, dealing with personal courage in the face of peer pressure and cowardice. It’s also a masterpiece of slow-key simplicity, one that continues to speak volumes, better than other Westerns that came before and after it.

The great Gary Cooper (in an iconic, Oscar-winning performance) is Will Kane, a marshal who has married Amy (the always radiant Grace Kelly), a Quaker, and has resigned. He later finds out that an old nemesis he once arrested will arrive back in town to settle the score. Amy wants Will to leave with her, but fears that the criminal will be after him no matter what he does, so he changes him mind and stays. He tries to get help from the townspeople, but many of them refuse. In the end, Will is left on his own to face the criminal and his goons.

Audiences didn’t know what to make of it in 1952, with its complexities and allegories (it was released during the McCarthy era, Red Scare, and the House Un-American Activities Committee after all), and the fact that it takes its time to fully tell its story, in real time. Now is the time, being one of the greatest films ever made and having more on its ‘western’ mind than thundering horses and shooting guns, to understand why it remains an essential classic of cinema.

Making its 4K UHD debut this week from Kino Lorber, I bet it looks amazing. Special features include two new commentaries: one with author/film historian Alan K. Rode, the other with film historian/writer Julie Kirgo; six featurettes; and trailers.

If you happen to love High Noon and its humanly unorthodox approach to the western, then this release is definitely for you! Read Mat Brewster’s review.

Other releases:

A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds (1934-1959) (Criterion): A two-film set featuring Ozu’s 1934 silent classic and his own 1959 beguiling color remake about complex humanity.

The Crow 4K: 30th Anniversary Edition (Paramount): The late Brandon Lee embodies the role of Eric Draven, a rocker who comes back from the grave in the guise of a night bird to avenge his and his girlfriend’s deaths.

The Rain People (Warner Archive): The late, great Shirley Knight stars in Coppola’s second feature about a pregnant housewife who abandons her husband and goes on a road trip to find herself. Along the way, she encounters both a troubled footballer (James Dunn) and a lovelorn police officer (Robert Duvall). She tries to help them, but that’s easier said than done.

Bonus Pick from Mat Brewster: The Church 4K UHD: Michael Soavi’s horror film from 1988 contains all the stuff you’d ever want from a late 1980s Italian horror, and that to excess. Severin Films is releasing it in all its UHD glory. Read Joe Garcia III’s review.