The Man Called Noon

Four years before this film, Peter Collinson had directed the hugely successful ITALIAN JOB featuring a terrific European ensemble that included Michael Caine and Raf Vallone, and was full of humorous heist action.

Sadly, he did not manage to whip up the same level of inspiration here, and the highly original and irreverent sequences in ITALIAN JOB make way in THE MAN CALLED NOON to a ponderous narrative occasionally jolted out of its snail pace by shootouts, and a contrived dialogue ripping off such quality Westerns as Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME in the WEST, Fred Zinnemann's HIGH NOON, Nicholas Ray's JOHNNY GUITAR, among others. Even UN FLIC, the 1972 Jean-Pierre Melville-directed French thriller featuring Alain Delon and Richard Crenna, made a contribution with the model train sequence in which Crenna also runs around the roof (thankfully without the helicopter).

Acting is generally substandard. Crenna never amounted to much as an actor. Here, he suffers from amnesia, keeps giving himself the name of a man who exists and Boyd seeks. Crenna's good looks are consistently emphasized, and he often seems either perplexed or like he has just spotted another killer. The film opens with him getting shot and escaping from a pinned down, under fire position, to a train that just happens to be blowing its horn to leave the tiny town's station. In the process, the injured Crenna eludes and flees more than 10 heavily armed men seeking him and makes off on the train where a strangely solicitous Stephen Boyd helps him evade.

That is where movie producer Boyd comes in. 14 years earlier, Boyd had memorably played the evil Roman consul Masala in BEN-HUR, but the sole connection is that here he too does quite a bit of horseriding. By 1973, Boyd was a waning star playing a pawn on the film's chessboard, of which two different sets surface at the end with Farley Granger deciding the moves as Judge Niland, who also masters rifle shooting, thereby sentencing no end of lives.

Two beautiful females appear: spaghetti beauty Rosa Schiaffino as the white dressed good woman Fan Davidge, and Patty Shepard as the black-dressed baddie Peg Cullane. Neither is particularly necessary for the action, but obviously the film needed female presences to be box office viable.

Plenty of breathtaking landscape shots, lovingly filmed trains arriving at stations, make THE MAN CALLED NOON rather easy on the eye, especially when the musical score is not too loud and modern to fit the action in the late 19th Century West.

Rather mediocre film. I doubt I will rewatch it. 6/10.

Have you ever awakened from a vivid dream that quickly fades? That is exactly how I would describe my viewing experience with " The Man Called Noon." The story of a gunslinger with amnesia is extremely vague. You know it all is leading somewhere, but you have too little information to care about the characters. What you do get is a showcase for stunt falls, some truly excellent photography and memorable locations. What you don't get is enough character development to comprehend the motive behind all the gunslinging chaos. Rosanna Schaffino's magnificent brown eyes are more interesting than most of the characters. Richard Crenna is no Clint Eastwood, and since the "Dollar Westerns" preceeded Noon, it is easy to see why "The Man Called Noon" is so obscure. I would describe this as difficult to sit through, difficult to understand, but worth seeing once for the unbelievably stunning photography. MERK.

reviewers on this page complain that this is just another ordinary western - that's the same as saying that the Taj Mahal is just another house - which it is - but what a house!

OK, this is not the Taj Mahal of anything but it is a western in which somebody took the time to find the right angles to shoot from and the right beautiful music to accompany everything with. This time and care put in, changes this film from being a trivial western into being a nicely mysterious experience with imagery that stick to the mind.

The mystery - it is true - is not so much in the dialogue as in the silence between the spoken words. The action is not as important as the scenery in which it takes place.

In the end you are left with a feeling of surprising satisfaction for something that on the surface seems trivial indeed.

"The Man Called Noon" (1973) is a Spanish/Italian/English Western starring Richard Crenna as the eponymous character and Stephen Boyd as his pardner. After Noon suffers amnesia from being winged in the head and falling, he teams-up with Rimes (Boyd) and meets a woman named Fan (Rosanna Schiaffino), who takes a liking to him. Farley Granger and Patty Shepard are other characters in the story, which features a hidden cave and fortune.

Shot in Spain, the film has the cool style and music of Spaghetti Westerns of the time, but with an arguably better story and characters, likely because the script's based on a Louis L'Armour novel. Unfortunately, as the movie progresses its flaws surface, like an obvious smudge on the lens of one of the cameras, the inexplicable lights in the "bat cave" and an increasingly unbelievable vibe. Despite this, Crenna and Boyd are effective Western protagonists and Rosanna & Patty are agreeable female eye candy. Although mediocre overall, it's worth checking out if you like Westerns from the 60s/70s.

The film runs 98 minutes.

GRADE: C+

Despite the fact that Stephen Boyd starred in a couple of the most famous films ever made, he really was a singularly mediocre actor and that is pretty clearly illustrated in this hotch-potch of a western. Here he ("Rimes") finds himself assisting the forgetful "Noon" (Richard Crenna) to track down who he is, where he is from and just how, exactly, he found himself in this amnesiac state. During moments of lucidity, "Noon" recalls a cache of gold - so the two, along with the feisty "Fan" (Rosanna Schiaffino) set off to find it before nasty "Judge Niland" (Farley Granger) and his slightly do-lally pal "Peg" (Patty Shepard) do them all in. Peter Collinson has done an OK job with this. These multi-national efforts were never as good on screen as they might have looked on paper. Crenna is efficient, though not spectacular and there is some nice cinematography to accompany a jaunty score from Luis Bacalov. Nothing new here and not a film I could say I shall ever watch again.