Les colts au soleil

I would never put paella westerns and Louis L'amour in the same sentence, let alone in a film, as L'amour books are traditional as it gets, but it works here. From the tense intro till the end, the film lives up to the excellence of the book, capturing the mystery, the characters quite well. The landscape lends itself to the suspense - and the action is gritty and exciting, especially at the end ( the ranch in the cave is well-imagined.)

Though there's action, it never overrides the narrative, and the focus is on Richard Crenna, looking cool, all dressed in black looking like Johnny Cash, who has lost his memory after an attempt on his life. From there, with the help of the underrated Stephen Boyd, he tries to learn who he is, and for his efforts he gets a passel load of bullets heading his way.

Great cast - Farley Granger, Rosanna Schiaffino and the hottie villainess Patty Shepherd. - great action. A bit confusing at times, but amnesiac films - like Bourne identity - tend to have this streak, and you have to sit it out and be patient and you'll soon get the answers. Maybe the dialogue could've been sharper, more clearer, however, it is a solid western that should get more attention.

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.

I have seen a fair few spaghetti westerns and while the ones in the upper bracket are great, a lot are mediocre and indistinguishable from one another. So, it was kind of nice to find that this one was a little more original. Okay, it has another stranger with supreme weapon skills at its centre but in this case he is mysterious mainly because he has forgotten who he is after falling out a high window during an assassination attempt, so the story is partly about him discovering his identity - is he a cold blooded killer? It's a very different idea for a western and it works pretty well. Aside from this, it is photographed to an above average standard and there are a few interesting characters. It does maybe dovetail into less interesting and typical material in the last third but on the whole, this was a pleasingly distinctive Italian western.

"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+

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.