High Noon (1952)
Director Fred Zinnemann's film High Noon was made during
the McCarthy era. Consequently, it has been invested with
political significance way beyond the striking simplicity of its
plot.
The allegorical claims that are made for it originated with its
screenwriter Carl Foreman, a victim of the McCarthy witch hunt in
Hollywood, who professed to see his script as an allegory of his
own situation. Fred Zinnemann denied this interpretation,
considering it the story of a man driven to act in accordance with
his own conscience, while conceding that the town in which the
action takes place is "a symbol of democracy gone soft."
The nature of the film's message continues to challenge the
film scholars, historians and critics who examine and analyse it,
but in the annals of popular culture it remains a classic Western,
one of the best of all time. To legions of ordinary moviegoers, High
Noon conjures the lasting image of Gary Cooper's weary and
reluctant hero, the young Grace Kelly's ice-maiden beauty, Dmitri
Tompkin's haunting theme song, Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darling,
and Floyd Crosby's atmospheric black and white photography.
Carl Foreman based his screenplay on The Tin Star, a
two-page magazine story. Played out in real time - the 90 minutes
in which the incidents take place correspond to the 90-minute
running-time of the film - denoted by Zinnemann's artful use of a
clock as a marker that contributes to the tension, the story
begins 10:40 AM on a Sunday morning in the fictional frontier town
of Hadleyville. Sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper), is at his own
wedding reception, prior to retiring and leaving town to start
life afresh with his young Quaker bride, Amy (Grace Kelly).
During the festivities, however, Kane is warned that Frank
Miller (Ian MacDonald), a murderer whom he had helped to convict,
has been released from the penitentiary. Miller is heading for
Hadleyville to exact revenge by killing Kane and will arrive on
the 12:00 noon train. Three of Miller's old cohorts are already
waiting at the otherwise deserted train depot to escort him into
town for the fatal shoot-out.
Amy implores her new husband to leave town immediately but,
determined to face out Miller and rid the town of the killer's
malign influence, he ignores her pleadings, and those of others,
including Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado), his former lover, who urges
him to take his new bride and escape to safety. For an hour,
between 10:45 and 11:45, Kane attempts to drum up support from
among the townspeople, but nobody is willing to stand by him.
A number of people begin to throw their belongings into wagons,
preparing to leave town temporarily before the trouble starts at
noon; even Kane's deputy, resentful at having been passed over for
the job in favour of a stranger, deserts him.
Amy, too, prepares to leave - on the same train that is
bringing Miller to town - and, while waiting at the hotel, learns
from the clerk that many inhabitants of Hadleyville would like to
see Miller kill her husband because they want a return to the kind
of town where saloons and gambling are allowed to flourish.
The noon train arrives on time. Frightened and alone, but
wedded irrevocably to his own moral code, Kane makes out his will
and prepares to face the gunmen, who ride into town. He ambushes
one, and kills a second in a shoot-out.
Hearing the gunfire, Amy rushes to her husband's aid, shoots
another of Miller's henchmen in the back, but is seized by Miller
himself as a hostage. During the struggle that ensues in her
trying to free herself, Kane is able to shoot Miller dead. He
throws his badge in the dust and rides out of the deserted town
with his wife.
When High Noon was released it was not an immediate hit.
In the strained climate of the times, that gesture of Kane's -
throwing away his badge - was interpreted by some as an insult to
Federal authority and led to accusations of subversion. As
Zinnemann interpreted it, Kane's action was simply intended as
"a gesture of contempt for a craven community."
The film captured the public imagination only gradually, but
its excellence was recognized in the winning of four Academy
Awards (music score, title song, editing, and best actor) and
three nominations (picture, screenplay, and director), and over
the years it came to gross several million dollars of profit.
While widely viewed as a "classic" Western, several
commentators consider High Noon a realist Western,
providing a documentary depiction of a place and its people that
was undoubtedly representative of a hundred towns across the
frontier during the 1870s.
It can also be read as a commentary on the genre itself, one
that observes the classical unities of time and action. Some have
even credited the film with inaugurating a new sub genre, the
"adult western," in its mature treatment of its
otherwise familiar "good vs. evil" theme.
What cannot be denied, however, is that High Noon
changed the Western genre by both streamlining and rethinking it
as both an extension and a commentary upon the classic tradition.
As opposed to the ultimate redemption of townspeople in such
later films as The Magnificent Seven, the citizens of
Hadleyville are craven to the end. This is, of course, in direct
opposition to the mythology of the West, in which the venality of
the common man is redeemed by a folk hero whose bravery in the
face of overwhelming odds inspires them to rise above themselves
for the common good.
On the other hand, the contradictory currents running through
the town (development vs. frontier lawlessness) and the
ambivalence of the citizens who, each for their own reasons,
refuse to side with Kane can be taken to represent the currents of
the American political climate in the 1950s.
This interpretation is underpinned by the deliberate vagueness
of the town's location and the film's exact historical time
period. Thus, on an allegorical level, Hadleyville could be any
town at any point in history, where the common man falls prey to
cowardice and fear, and the high moral courage of the few is
severely tested.
The chronological symmetry of the film and the relentless
progress of the ever-present clock not only helps create and
maintain tension, but counterpoints Kane's agonizingly slow
progress in trying to recruit help and decide his course of
action.
In its characterizations, the film offers an anti-mythological
touch that sets it apart from most examples of the Western genre.
Will Kane does not conform to the usual heroic figure that
audiences of the 1950s had come to expect.
Both the character and the man who portrayed him are somewhat
past their prime. Cooper, who was not in the best of health,
appeared haggard and drawn, and conveyed an air of world weariness
- precisely the quality that director Zinneman had in mind.
The female characters also depart from the female stereotype
found in most Westerns. Though both Helen and Amy are emotionally
involved with Will and are diametrically opposed (Helen is a fiery
Hispanic businesswoman, Amy a Nordically cool and devout Quaker
pacifist), both are highly principled and intelligent and cannot
be pigeonholed.
They are allowed to move the action forward by their principled
stands, and are able to bond across racial lines while respecting
their differences. Both survive the action and give strong
evidence of strength and independence. This was not only rare in
traditional bound Westerns, but flew in the face of 1950s American
social convention when women had not yet assumed positions of
power.
In the opinion of many, High Noon has continued to stand
head and shoulders above most frontier Westerns in its depiction
of ethical conflicts and ideas that cannot be confined to one
particular genre, place, or time, but which always seem to
manifest themselves in their most elemental form in the Western.
The film has been credited as a significant influence on later
Westerns, inspiring such thoughtful and revisionist films as Pat
Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid (1969), The Wild Bunch (1969), High
Plains Drifter (1973), The Shootist (1976), and Unforgiven
(1992), all of which dealt with the ending of the Western way of
life and the death of the six-gun mentality.
|
