This odd Charles Bronson comedy western comes on like Support Your Local Gunfighter but turns out to be a strange, Jean Genet-tinged meditation on illusion, erotic games-playing, social construction and mythologizing. Bronson plays Graham, a two-bit outlaw who dreams that his gang's up-coming bank-job is doomed. On the way to town he loses his horse and the gang stop off at the ranch of a wealthy widow, Amanda (Jill Ireland); he engineers to stay at the ranch whilst the others go off to rob the bank.
There follows a strange, BDSM-ish and role-playing erotic encounter between Graham and Amanda. The film makes it clear that they are immediately sexually attracted but they have a protracted session of pretence in which he plays the part of a mean outlaw and she the prim lady in mourning. He attempts to ravish her but, crucially, can see that her resistance is a socially restrained charade. To facilitate her acquiescence, he pretends to be impotent and she pretends to help him to a cure. Through these games, which include a fair amount of rough and tumble play-fighting, the two manage to reach a place where their desires can be fulfilled. They spend an idyllic three hours together until Graham learns that the bank raid has gone wrong and his fellow robbers have been arrested. Amanda, determined to create him as the man of her dreams, insists that he goes to town to rescue them. Determined to feed her fantasy, Graham affects to ride into town but contrives to fake his own death by exchanging clothes with an itinerant dentist. The dead body (face hidden) is shown to Amanda, who (wearing a Jezebel-like red dress she'd put on to eroticise her time with Graham) faints when the posse brings the outlaw's corpse to the door. Graham is arrested for the dentist's misdemeanours and ends up with a year in gaol.
So far, the film has been pretty much contained within the enclosed space of Amanda's home, a kind of faux-European mansion in the middle of nowhere. Now the action opens up, with Amanda riding to town to be humiliated and scorned by the townsfolk as a scarlet woman, condemned for sharing illicit hours with an outlaw. Graham and Amanda's encounter suggests that a strange exchange takes place when an outlaw makes love to a respectable member of society – he has to give up his outlaw status and she has to take on a mark of sin. But now the plot turns again, as Amanda gives a rousing speech to the crowd in which she affirms that she loved Graham for the 3 hours they spent together and it redeemed her life. The townsfolk love this and a passing writer offers to turn her story into a book.
The book about Graham and Amanda's encounter, romanticized and embellished, becomes a bestseller with spin-off song and other merchandise. When Graham is released from prison, he returns to the town in disguise to discover that it has turned itself into a theme-park, a memorial to the now mythic defeat of Graham's gang and the love of the outlaw and the lady. There are even tours to Amanda's mansion, which Graham takes. When he reveals himself to his love, she is none too pleased to see him. She'd remembered him and written him as taller and better looking! His meagre dream of escaping into a mediocre life of banking and marriage holds no appeal to Amanda, who wishes to uphold the myth for its worldwide audience of fans. Rather than give up the myth, Amanda kills herself, her real flesh disappearing to be replaced entirely by her legend.
Where does this leave the real Graham? Of course, no one believes him when he tells them who he is – not even people who used to know him. They have all bought into the myth and the reality is no longer viable currency. Graham descends into a pitiful drunkenness. In ironic scenes, he interrupts songs and plays about his own life, only to be rejected by the audience. Finally he is left in a lunatic asylum – where, in a bitter twist, the delusional accept him for who he really is.
From Noon Till Three tells an ambitious story of American mythologizing (reminiscent of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) but daringly combines it with a meditation on how the erotic is built on a fantasy which supplants the real. It is here the film resembles the plays of Jean Genet – the whole of society becomes grounded in an erotic fantasy and woe-betide anyone who can't live up to it. Entire lives become mere dressing up and pretence.
The film is prevented by being great by the often pedestrian direction of its author, Frank Gilroy. There is a little visual flare in some shots but too often things feel like a television movie, lacking visual and cinematic poetry. This is a shame, because there are odd times when the sets are emphasised as just that – theatrical sets – and the theme of the film feels visualised appropriately. The opening – an deserted Western set onto which the outlaws ride to meet their doom in what turns out to be Graham's dream – is perfection and suggests that these characters lives are themselves dreams acted out in an entirely constructed society, where only sex and death are real. To Gilroy's credit as a director, he does get extraordinary performances from Ireland (the right mix of minx, coquette, prim and maniac) and Bronson, who stretches himself as never before and inhabits his series of disguises with aplomb, whilst never losing sight of the character's reality as a rather grubby nobody.
There follows a strange, BDSM-ish and role-playing erotic encounter between Graham and Amanda. The film makes it clear that they are immediately sexually attracted but they have a protracted session of pretence in which he plays the part of a mean outlaw and she the prim lady in mourning. He attempts to ravish her but, crucially, can see that her resistance is a socially restrained charade. To facilitate her acquiescence, he pretends to be impotent and she pretends to help him to a cure. Through these games, which include a fair amount of rough and tumble play-fighting, the two manage to reach a place where their desires can be fulfilled. They spend an idyllic three hours together until Graham learns that the bank raid has gone wrong and his fellow robbers have been arrested. Amanda, determined to create him as the man of her dreams, insists that he goes to town to rescue them. Determined to feed her fantasy, Graham affects to ride into town but contrives to fake his own death by exchanging clothes with an itinerant dentist. The dead body (face hidden) is shown to Amanda, who (wearing a Jezebel-like red dress she'd put on to eroticise her time with Graham) faints when the posse brings the outlaw's corpse to the door. Graham is arrested for the dentist's misdemeanours and ends up with a year in gaol.
So far, the film has been pretty much contained within the enclosed space of Amanda's home, a kind of faux-European mansion in the middle of nowhere. Now the action opens up, with Amanda riding to town to be humiliated and scorned by the townsfolk as a scarlet woman, condemned for sharing illicit hours with an outlaw. Graham and Amanda's encounter suggests that a strange exchange takes place when an outlaw makes love to a respectable member of society – he has to give up his outlaw status and she has to take on a mark of sin. But now the plot turns again, as Amanda gives a rousing speech to the crowd in which she affirms that she loved Graham for the 3 hours they spent together and it redeemed her life. The townsfolk love this and a passing writer offers to turn her story into a book.
The book about Graham and Amanda's encounter, romanticized and embellished, becomes a bestseller with spin-off song and other merchandise. When Graham is released from prison, he returns to the town in disguise to discover that it has turned itself into a theme-park, a memorial to the now mythic defeat of Graham's gang and the love of the outlaw and the lady. There are even tours to Amanda's mansion, which Graham takes. When he reveals himself to his love, she is none too pleased to see him. She'd remembered him and written him as taller and better looking! His meagre dream of escaping into a mediocre life of banking and marriage holds no appeal to Amanda, who wishes to uphold the myth for its worldwide audience of fans. Rather than give up the myth, Amanda kills herself, her real flesh disappearing to be replaced entirely by her legend.
Where does this leave the real Graham? Of course, no one believes him when he tells them who he is – not even people who used to know him. They have all bought into the myth and the reality is no longer viable currency. Graham descends into a pitiful drunkenness. In ironic scenes, he interrupts songs and plays about his own life, only to be rejected by the audience. Finally he is left in a lunatic asylum – where, in a bitter twist, the delusional accept him for who he really is.
From Noon Till Three tells an ambitious story of American mythologizing (reminiscent of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) but daringly combines it with a meditation on how the erotic is built on a fantasy which supplants the real. It is here the film resembles the plays of Jean Genet – the whole of society becomes grounded in an erotic fantasy and woe-betide anyone who can't live up to it. Entire lives become mere dressing up and pretence.
The film is prevented by being great by the often pedestrian direction of its author, Frank Gilroy. There is a little visual flare in some shots but too often things feel like a television movie, lacking visual and cinematic poetry. This is a shame, because there are odd times when the sets are emphasised as just that – theatrical sets – and the theme of the film feels visualised appropriately. The opening – an deserted Western set onto which the outlaws ride to meet their doom in what turns out to be Graham's dream – is perfection and suggests that these characters lives are themselves dreams acted out in an entirely constructed society, where only sex and death are real. To Gilroy's credit as a director, he does get extraordinary performances from Ireland (the right mix of minx, coquette, prim and maniac) and Bronson, who stretches himself as never before and inhabits his series of disguises with aplomb, whilst never losing sight of the character's reality as a rather grubby nobody.