But there was one that stood above all the rest, although just exactly why this particular western was so distinctive was a great mystery to me for a long time—until I discovered that everyone else had noticed it too. I simply could not understand why I found my memory unable to shed it. After all, this was a black-and-white (and therefore before interval) movie with lots of talking and hardly any action (one fist-fight and one unglamorous gunfight at the end) and comprised a man walking in circles about a town for most of it. Yet I was riveted, choking on the mounting suspense relieved by unexpected emotional surges in a way that few other films ever managed.

 

“There’s jest some things a man has got to do.”