The slumber breaks at High Noon

It has been a fine Sunday. Saw High Noon. Garry Cooper’s swagger with an intensely held cigarette almost made me revisit my decision to live a tobacco free life. It’s been over a decade since I first saw it. It appeared like yesterday.

Quite a pleasant trip down the good ‘ol M Lane it has been, also made me realize how important a role cinema has had on my life. I’ve been quite my father’s lad in terms of the cinema I’ve consumed. Infinite frames remain imprinted, from Newman (Butch) and Redford (Kid) planning their escapes to Bolivia to Robert Donat[1] staring into the blue Danube during his journey from Mr. Chippings to becoming good old Mr. Chips.

Retracing my memories of cinema, I vividly remember ­Shanney Chacha instructing us to pay special attention to “मोहे पनघट पे नन्दलाल छेड़ गयो रे” in K Asif’s Mughl-e-Aazam to appreciate Birju Maharaj’s choreography. He would quietly whisper in our ears that Delilah’s betrayal would not hamper Samson’s eventual victory, which was perhaps his way of ensuring that we sat through. Chacha was a रसिक. I think he needs a post solely dedicated.

Now back to Garry Cooper and Grace Kelly. What I thoroughly enjoyed as a child was the great imagery that the film captured. It was a story well told. It had a macho protagonist, who has guts, and who shoots real sharp and kills all the bad guys. It had a beautiful Kelly, who cannot bear to be away from her husband, and who actually helps him in killing the bad guys. Later on in life I was to realize that there was much more to the film than met the child’s eye. It was during a course on Culture and Communication which I took during my post graduate years that I discovered it was intended as an allegory in Hollywood for the failure of the Hollywood people to stand up to the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era. And that the last shot in which Cooper throws away his marshal’s badge was a glorified defiance of the establishment.





[1] Donat incidentally managed to wrestle the Oscar (1940) from Clark Gable who was nominated for his performance in ‘Gone with the wind’.