'High Noon' works on many levels; the second-to-none screenplay, the subtle direction, the clock, Gary Cooper's Oscar-winning performance... It's about a small town sheriff who must basically stand alone to defend the people from a wild gang of outlaws, who have just been let out of jail and will arrive on the noon train. Although he does not have to, and the town does not deserve saving, Cooper decides that he will do the job that he was hired to do. A classic amongst Westerns, it strips the ge find out more...

Ford turns Monument Valley into an interior landscape as Wayne, and a half breed, pursue his five-year odyssey, a grim quest to kill both the Indian who abducted his niece and the tainted girl herself. Essential viewing and generally hailed as one of the greatest westerns. find out more...

Peckinpah completely rewrites John Ford's Western mythology by looking at the passing of the Old West from the point of view of marginalised outlaws rather than law-abiding settlers. While never ignoring their brutality he contrasts their code of loyalty with that of the corrupt railroad magnates. In purely cinematic terms, the film is a savagely beautiful spectacle, Lucien Ballard's superb cinematography complementing Peckinpah's darkly elegiac vision. find out more...