Purely Joyful Movie!

Good concept, poorly executed.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

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.

I like Charles Bronson, always have always will, so some could say I am biased. So be it. Of course watching Death wish and all the sequels at one go, one sleepless night almost killed the liking, but not entirely. I knew nothing about this movie made on my birth year, except that it came highly recommended. I certainly had no clue what to expect and so what came to me took me by complete surprise. We all know Charles Bronson the actor and the character of the roles he plays. The unsmiling, wooden expression, the complete lack of humour and so on, so half an hour into the movie when he's ripping Amanda's dress off I was pinching myself in disbelief. I was also furious with my friend for recommending this to me. A Charles Bronson playing an ex confederate gentleman soldier, not doffing his hat to a lady, forcing himself on an unwilling woman, this was definitely not the Bronson we knew. No siree that ain't the Bronson I know and I was also willing at that moment to say, "I rode with George Dorsey myself and he is nothing like you". By then the Jack Daniels had dulled my otherwise perspicacious nature and I was swept away with the currents of the song about impossible love. The second time around when I watched the movie I was ready for it. It had me in splits most of the time, with Bronson pretty much hamming away the parts where he deceives the starchy widow. This role does explore depths to his acting character making me wish we had seen Bronson in more different roles than the ones he has always played. I don't know whether it was because I knew they were a real life pair, but their 3 hour romance was totally believable and very much up there with the classic love stories. I doubt if Hemingway could replicate two people falling in love so tempestuously as George and Amanda did in those three hours. Many lines in the lovely waltz can be closely identified with by anyone who has experienced that one heady feeling of being in love, albeit for a day or two. A love that remained unexplored or unfulfilled. This is the first time I saw Jill Ireland in a role and made me think that if this was how she looked and acted, why the deuce haven't we seen them together more often or even just her? What a loss!On the flop side though there is too little attention to detail. Bronson playing a destitute ex-confederate soldier has no southern accent. Sam and Edna, presumably the freed slaves too, have nothing remotely close to an accent.One wonders why Bronson waited until so long to experiment with roles and once he did, why he didn't do this more often. For story line, character building, some pretty good acting and lovely music, I give this 8 out of ten.

From Noon Till Three (1976) *** (out of 4) Extremely delighting romantic comedy with Charles Bronson playing a bank robber who can't go on the latest heist and instead stays back at a house with a beautiful woman (Jill Ireland). The two spend three romantic hours together but after she thinks he's been killed, she decides to write a story about those three hours, which turns him into a legend but when he returns there's going to be trouble as he wants to be himself and not the legend. When you mention Charles Bronson you can have a great number of films to discuss. I have discussed the films of Bronson with many people but when I mention this film here everyone goes quiet as not many have heard of it and even fewer have actually seen it, which is a real shame because this is certainly one of his best. It's not common for Bronson to take part in what's basically a romantic comedy but he and Ireland really work wonderfully well together and this is clearly their best film together. It really seems like neither one is giving an actual "performance" but instead they're just being themselves because both come off so natural. Just take a look at the scene where they're swimming together as the perfect example. Perhaps they are just acting but this sequence feels so real that you can't help but feel they're just playing around and showing their real love for one another. The first seventy-five minutes of this movie are so refreshing, funny and charming because we're seeing Bronson playing a character unlike anything he had played before or since. I found him to be incredibly charming here and it's just great fun for a fan to see him flirting, picking flowers and actually smiling. Ireland, never accused of being a great actress, actually does a very good job here and is quite believable in her role. I think the final act with the "truth vs. legend" doesn't work as well as I'm sure everyone was hoping for but you have to give the filmmakers a lot of credit for the ending that I won't ruin here. The film actually says a lot about fame, believing lies that you might read and various other things but in the end the real jewel is seeing Bronson playing a role that he never really got to again, which is a shame considering how great he is here.

I'm shocked to learn that only 17 comments were written in the IMDb so far. I've seen this movie 20 years ago and for a second time last week. I still feel this is a great movie.Full of inspiration and transpiration, with excellent script and directing, not to mention the great performance by the 2 leading actor and actress, both exhibiting masterpiece achievements for their professionalism.It was a low cost production, but great film doesn't necessarily cost much. It's a complete waste of movie resource that so little people had seen this masterpiece.Probably Bronson's only comedy, I strongly and unreservedly recommend it to anyone!