Zwischen Zwölf und Drei

This modest little gem is a humorous, funny, melancholic movie about what you can encounter if you fall in love with a romantic woman - you can end up bigger than life, and that can get you into serious trouble! Bronson - far from his usual he-man cliché roles - delivers a very nice, humorous performance; and so does Jill Ireland. Just watch it, even if you are far from being a Bronson fan - this droll flick is enjoyable for everyone!

To tell you more, and make you understand, one cannot avoid spoilers; so here's the plot:

***** SPOILERS *****************************

Graham Dorsey (Bronson) is a member of a gang which is on their way to rob a bank. Being frightened of the job, he takes the chance to stay in a house by the road until his buddies come back from the job.

The lady of the house, Amanda (Ireland), a young, attractive widow, is alone in the house. Graham manages to get her to bed with him. They fall for each other (he pretends to be somewhat more noble than he really is), and share some hours of love and bliss - until a posse comes to catch him (the robbery had failed). He tries to flee (telling Amanda he goes to free his accomplices). But he ends up in jail, sentenced for another man's frauds, while the other man is erroneously shot in his place. So Amanda gets word that Graham is dead.

Amanda, formerly an honorable widow, now looked upon as a bandit's mistress, is alone in her grief. She writes a book about the story; but Graham having overstated, and Amanda having a strong tendency to romanticize and idealize her feelings, she describes the whole story much bigger than life. The book becomes a best-seller; not only locally, but all over the world. The tale gets a huge hype.

So when Graham is free again after a year in jail, and comes back into town (in disguise) for Amanda, he finds, to his surprise and growing amusement, some sort of "Graham Dorsey Disneyland" at the place, built around the book's tale. And Amanda's house has turned into a GD museum, visited by loads of tourists guided by Amanda who tells them "her story". He, too, enters, asking for a tour. He gets it; Amanda does not recognize him - not even when he takes his masquerade off: she simply does not believe him - she believes her book, and in her book, he is bigger, more beautiful, and better in any respect! (very funny scene)

Finally, he succeeds to make her believe him. But to his big surprise, Amanda does not want the real GD - she prefers to live for the legend! She tells him that formerly, it was a matter of just the two of them; but now it has become a matter of the feelings of all the world, which she would not hurt by destroying the myth. Even when he tries to apply force, she just steals his gun and demands that he leaves forever. He refuses. When she sees no more way to change his mind, she even shoots herself before his eyes.

On his following lonely odyssey, he meets the Graham & Amanda hype everywhere, ad nauseam: and whenever he gets up to protest against the lies, saying that HE is GD, he is laughed at, shouted down, or even threatened for his "fraud". Irony of fate: it is only in the end, when he is put in an asylum for his "lunacy", among the lunatics, that Graham finds people who believe him and accept him, and finds his peace of mind.

*********** END OF SPOILERS *******************

So this movie, though playing in a western milieu, is at its core a story of the fate of an unusual love. It is very unpretentious (far away from roaring schmaltz like "Gone with the wind" or "Titanic"; lightyears away from that big-mouthed, stylish soulless crap that we have to endure since the eighties), just a humble, bittersweet little (tragi)comedy with moments of the grotesque, about life's pleasures and grief, about becoming a culprit and becoming a victim; about the value and the cost of idealizing and true life. If it wouldn't be for Bronson and Ireland starring, you might call it a B-film. But Charles Bronson - surely not being the king of actors - delivers a very nice, humorous performance here in a very unbronsonesque role, together with his excelling real life wife Jill Ireland. It's a pity that the direction is wooden sometimes. And, fitting superbly to its old-fashioned style, the movie has a nice catchy melancholic little waltz as a theme song ("Hello and Goodbye"/Elmer Bernstein/Alan and Marilyn Bergman, sung by Ireland), dealing with the elusiveness of love.

Give it a chance! You will come out of it thoughtful, I guess; and about how many Hollywood films can you say that?

Valuation: I would spontaneously give it a good 7 out of 10 - but I spontaneously tend to judge relating to an IMDb average valuation of below 5, as it should be; but the actual average being near 7, it should get an 8 (though this is unfair to the comedy masterpieces like Lubitsch's "To be or not to be", or Chaplin's "Modern times"; or Tati's "Jour de fête" - those should have at least a 12, then! :-) )

If you seek killer Bronson, he isn't home. But if you are willing to watch Bronson doing lighter work and be on screen with his wife in a mildly funny satire, enjoy. From first meeting to keeper of the legend, this is a Jill Ireland vehicle. It satirizes Bronson's previous work which grew out of the dime novel creation of the American West. We watch the Bronson character lose control of his real life because a widow creates a better outlaw than he was. Enjoy this for the satire on every level including the score and the songs.

It is a refreshing change of pace compared to the blood beast Bronson had to feed in many action movies. Now that it is being broadcast, watch it with the idea that Bill Hickok and Bill Cody played on stage for money and that dime novelist Ned Buntline gave out those Buntline specials to the men he wrote about. I suspect most of you will at least chuckle at the world caught up in the legend of a third rate bank robber ensnared by a woman he seduced. And the end is better satire than real life Emmett Dalton going to Hollywood to help make movies about the Dalton gang robbing Coffeyville. For an adult audience, this is far better entertainment than Over the Hill Gang slapstick. Give it a try.

And its a Charles Bronson film! With a pretty good train crash too! I guess Bronson wanted to make a romantic comedy western with his gorgeous wife Jill Ireland and instead of starring in BILLY TWO HATS or THE SPIKES GANG or some other forgotten oater, he went for this. Rather like a BUTCH CASSIDY - CAT BALLOU combo, this small but charming robbery western gets its title from the afternoon liason he spends with Jill inbetween crime appointments. As Bryan Brown said about adultery in BREAKER MORANT: "A slice off a cut loaf is never missed............!" NOON TILL THREE did little business at the time and is never seen now, pity as like alot of small mid 70s films they are well made and still from the days when films were made to entertain, not shock or traumatise.

Charm is not a word you would associate Charles Bronson with, but he is chock full if it in this "romp." A group of bank robbers leave Charles Bronson at a widow's (Jill Ireland's) house because his horse goes lame. They vow to pick him up after the robbery in what they figure will be about three hours (thus the name of the movie). In those three hours Charles Bronson, after almost attacking Jill Ireland, decides to go for a sympathy play and has Jill Ireland, within 15 minutes making love to him to help him with his "impotency." While watching the movie, it makes you wonder how she held off for so long. If you want to see Charles Bronson half naked, with a physique of a man 20 years younger, making love - three times -- this is the movie for you. After he leaves, and is mistakenly thought killed, Jill Ireland writes a book about their three hour affair and the whole thing turns into a type of legend, which turns the town into a type of World's Fair exhibit. Charles Bronson ends up in jail for different reasons where he finds out that he has become a legend and of course ties to tell people that's he's that person, and if things weren't already crazy they get crazier. Charles Bronson is unrecognizable from the characters he played in practically all of his other movies. This movie shows his range as an actor and makes me sad he never got to display more of what he was actually capable of. Jill Ireland pulls off her character beautifully and also shows her range, something else we never got to see in her other movies. After thinking about the movie, I know why they did it. If you are channel surfing and see it, by all means watch it. I'm looking for it on DVD now. I want to buy it.

At the height of his stardom, Charles Bronson made this curious oddity. He stars as a bankrobber hiding out at a widow's residence and after a series of comical mishaps, fall in love with one another. This is probably Jill (Bronson's then real life wife) Ireland's best moment. She made a career doing a lot of second stringing in her husband's films but she comes into her own here in a believably sympathetic performance. As for Bronson, well he didn't do a lot of "cute" movies so it's nice to see him in something a little less nasty for a change. Also, he provides some impressive comic relief in his own inimitable, understated way. It is only hampered by some awfully wooden direction. Still, you could do a lot worse.