Thursday, July 30, 2009

High Noon and Killers

All right--two things.
One is that we didn't get to talk about the similarities/dissimilarities between Child of God and other serial killer stories you might be familiar with. I'd be interested to hear about that. I have some ideas, but I don't want to poison the well prematurely.

Two, we're going to start watching High Noon today--we likely won't finish until Monday, as we have some O'Connor to talk about. I'm interested in the conventions of the genre--westerns have clearly influenced the McCarthy we're about to get into, so having an understanding of the conventions he's working with and against seems like a useful project. High Noon is a canonical western, so we should be able to compile a pretty comprehensive list of the conventions. Keep track of what you notice here.

1 comment:

  1. The following statements are about the movies conventions and if I expected them or not.

    Predictable:

    1. The way the hero prevails over the evil criminals.
    2. There is a man seeking vengeance against our hero because the hero has punished him prior.
    3. I noticed a great amount of alcohol, no surprise here, there was nothing to do back then.
    4. People tell Kane to leave and he than fights a friend over it, but he still is adamant in exterminating the outlaw problem.

    Unpredictable:

    1. Grace Kelley's character chooses her husband's life over her religious beliefs and kills the third gunman by shooting him in the back.
    2. Many townspeople profess to admire Kane, only a fourteen year old boy is willing to lend a hand.

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