The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, Paramount, dir. John Ford) is a famous old western in delicious black and white, with John Wayne (as Tom Doniphon), James Stewart (as Senator Rance Stoddard), Lee Marvin (as Liberty Valance) and Vera Miles all billed. This was the first film that the University of Kansas would show in its student series in 1966. I still remember that from grad school. Senator Stoddard returns home to the western town of Shinbone to attend the funeral of Doniphon, a homeless man, recounts how he taught people literacy when living in Shinbone, and then had an encounter with the greatest bandit, Liberty Valance. The film is a technical library of old western filmmaking, with the visual contrasts between indoor and outdoor scenes in the old West. And it touches on issues like homelessness and illiteracy.
The Guns of Navaronne (1961, Columbia, dir. J. Lee Thompson, starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn) is memorable to me because I saw it in downtown DC two days before beginning my 80 ill-fated freshman days at William and Mary in 1961. My high school best friend treated me to it. The story is action-packed but obscure as British and allied commandos must rescue trapped British soldiers on the Greek island of Kiros, and overcome the German guns.
High Noon (1952, United Artists/Republic Pictures/Artisan (now)/Stanley Kramer, dir. Fred Zinneman, 88 min, PG) is the ultimate black-and-white abstract western, as Gary Cooper playing a US Marshall waits out a returning gunman and enlists the help of the townspeople. There is a grandfather clock that constant ticks towards noon, in a day when towns had a noon whistle. How far the western would go from this! (to "Brokeback Mountain" today). I saw this film with my mother at the Buckingham Theater in Arlington (now a US Post Office) while waiting for father to return home at National Airport back in the early 1950s.
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