High Noon

KAHRAMAN ŞERİF filmi: “zaman ve mekân unsurlarının var olması”, “klasik anlatı tarzı mevcudiyeti”, “çatışma ve çatışmanın şerif tarafından giderilmesi”, “erkek hegemonyası ve kadınların arka planda olması”, “iyi ve kötü karakterlerin varlığı“, ” filmin ideolojisinin varlığı” , “bireysellik, özgüven ve başarının işlenmesi”, “şiddet unsuru ve etkili bir son ile filmin nihayete ermesi” ve “görüntüleme ve ikonografideki gerekli unsurların varlığı” hususları birlikte ele alınarak değerlendirildiğinde Kahraman Şerif (High Noon)  filminin bir tür filmi olan western film türü özelliklerini getirmiş olduğu bazı yenilikler ve farklı bakış açısı ile genel olarak gösterdiği savunulabilir. Bu hali ile Kahraman Şerif filmi western türü dramatik özellikleri taşıyan bir filmdir.

The article explores the manifestly allegorical nature of Kurosawa's controversial 1950 film Rashomon, and how it was directly responding to the dishonesty of individuals called before recent war crimes trials (1946-48). After noting the overt symbolism of the film's opening setting, which manifestly alludes to the plight of Japan, the trials which dominated the nation's media in the late 1940s are also discussed (it notes 29 employees of the film company had been purged). As is stated at the film's onset, the community was distressed because it was evident that lies were being told and the truth concealed: similarly, in post-war Japan no one knew who to believe about war atrocities. Testimony is compromised, Rashomon shows, because the guilty seek to hide their misdeeds. A direct comparison is made with Clouzot's film from the Nazi-Occupation Period, Le Corbeau of 1943, which told a story of village life to likewise highlight dishonesty and betrayal in time of war. As with Rashomon, there was a local backlash against the film due to the plain, if uncomfortable contemporary message it delivered. Kurosawa's use of a medieval setting/story to moralise, again, about post-war Japan in his later samurai films, 'Seven Samurai' and 'Yojimbo', is considered; although, as is pointed out, his allegorical purpose was completely lacking in the popular Western versions of these films, 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'A Fistful of Dollars'. (Another cowboy film, 'High Noon', is praised in passing and likened to Kurosawa's approach.) Rashomon's seeming influence on Ingmar Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal', another allegorical tale of ethics and personal conduct against a medieval war setting, is also highlighted. 5pp

This essay examines representative stories of the American Western genre in both film and literature in light of various literary influences, including The Bible and classical epics such as Gilgamesh, The Iliad, and The Odyssey. These stories relate the dynamic tensions of characters caught between righteous and unrighteous anger, between home and longing for the road, and between the imperative to survive and the impulse to sacrifice oneself for others.

Over the past few years " Page Views " has become a space for Film Quarterly to highlight some of the most compelling new scholarship in the field of film and media studies. In collaboration with university presses and scholars, " Page Views " provides a dynamic showcase for critical texts and allows authors the opportunity to think through the impact of their works on the crossover audience that remains a hallmark of FQ's readership. This column marks the first time that I interview two authors of two books written specifically for the crossover audience. Noah Isenberg discusses We’ll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie and Glenn Frankel talks about High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic.

Living in the spectacle of Hong Kong’s skyscape, how often do its dwellers actually see, not to mention reach, its rooftops? Intriguingly, despite their apparent ephemerality and inaccessibility, the vertical fringes of the city feature frequently in Hong Kong cinema: the rooftop. In this article, we connect the cinematic trope of the rooftop to the anxiety of living in a postmetropolitan city like Hong Kong. We do so by walking with Georg Simmel’s blasé attitude and Benjamin’s flânerie in the metropolitan city, to meet Christoph Lindner’s more (self-)destructive blasé individual trying to grapple with his postmetropolitan anxiety. Finally, we posit to understand the deployment of rooftops in Hong Kong cinema – in the crime thriller Infernal Affairs, the coming-of-age drama High Noon and the psychological horror Inner Senses – as a way out, literally and figuratively, a space where one negotiates and perhaps overcomes a blasé postmetropolitan individuality with moments of radical reconnection.