Torrid Noon (1965) User Reviews

A BULGARIAN CLASSIC

[richardkassir · 8/10 · 19 August 2020]

This is a remarkable, absorbing, well shot, well acted and well scripted (if a bit over poetic at times) film that had me gripped from beginning to end. This is a film that looks like being one thing and then flips and becomes something else entirely without losing its thread or momentum. It opens at a station where soldiers on manoeuvres and civilians are waiting for a late train to arrive so theirs can set off. A captain and three privates take a hand pumped rail trolley and trundle off to see what's happened. They find the delayed train, but it's deserted. Meanwhile a commander, controlling a massive army training manoeuvre close to where the action is taking place, is furious when reports come in that a bridge they were going to use is blocked by civilians. He takes to a helicopter to see what's going on and as it passes over the fields he sees the abandoned train, then he comes to a river with the bridge. There are male and female farmers, middle class tourists from the deserted train and firemen on the river banks and on the bridge. In the water three of his tanks stand motionless. The commander, not best pleased, lands the helicopter to investigate. At this point the story changes. The film retreats a couple of hours to where three children are playing in natural pools near where their farmer families are gathering in the harvest. They are having fun in their deserted area of play and decide to move onto the nearby river by the bridge. The youngest boy doesn't want to get in as it's too deep for him, but the other two play and swim with the freedom of no adults being nearby. Under the bridge they find a fissure in the wall where a lot of small fish are. Not far away there is a full army manoeuvre taking place. The vibration of one of the army's bombs causes the bridge to shudder and one of the boys, neck deep in water, finds his hand has been trapped. The rest of the film is a compelling rescue mission. Made when Bulgaria was part of the USSR, this film could be seen as an example of the levelling effect of communism making all different types of people act as one. But it's both more subtle and simple than that, and is an uplifting show of a disparate group of people coming together in the face of an emergency.

The image of nature and the warmth of human relationships are interpreted with a great poetic intensity

[major · 10/10 · 22 September 2004]

The film belongs to the period of the Bulgarian cinema during the late fifties and the early sixties who has renovate it and known as 'the poetic wave' mainly associated with the films on subjects from the anti-fascist resistance. Though 'Hot Noon' possesses some of distinguishing features of this wave, it deals with a contemporary theme: the theme of human solidarity.

This is a screenwriter's debut of outstanding Bulgarian writer Yordan Radichkov and the first feature film directed by Zako Heskiya in which the image of nature and the warmth of human relationships are interpreted with a great poetic intensity.