NFR Project: 'High Noon' (1952)

 

NFR Project: “High Noon”

Dir: Fred Zinneman

Scr: Carl Foreman

Pho: Floyd Crosby

Ed: Elmo Williams

Premiere: July 24, 1952

85 min.

It’s funny. This film, the plot of which is now so familiar as to be a cliché, was once controversial.

In the old American frontier town of Hadleyville (a nod to Twain’s 1899 story “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyville”) veteran Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is getting married to the young Amy (Grace Kelly). He is all set to retire and move to another town. A new marshal is coming to replace him the next day. Word comes that Frank Miller, a killer Will sent to prison, has gotten out and is coming to town to gun him down in revenge. He arrives on the train at high noon.

Kane doesn’t run, for fear that Miller will just track him and kill him anyway. His new wife Amy is a pacifist and doesn’t believe he should fight. Kane determines that he will, and seeks others to deputize to join him in fighting the criminal and his gang. Everyone turns him down.

Kane had cleaned up the town, which had been in terror of Miller for years. Everyone praises him, but they all wish he would go away, taking the problem with him. Wife Amy determines to leave him, but she also confronts Kane’s former mistress Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado), thinking he is staying for her sake. She states that she is leaving town, too, and that Amy should stand by her man.

Miller comes to town, and he and his men come gunning for Kane. The streets of the town are empty; everyone is waiting to see the outcome of the fight. By hook and crook Kane kills two of the four men up against him. His wife Amy tosses aside her pacifism, pulls out a gun and kills another one. Finally, Kane shoots Miller dead. Kane throws his badge contemptuously in the dust, and he and Amy leave town.

During the production of this film, the film’s writer, Carl Foreman, was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee due to his suspected Communist activities. He refused to name names, so he was blacklisted and kicked off this picture. (He moved to England). John Wayne refused starring in this movie, seeing it as a thinly disguised allegory about the blacklist. Howard Hawks hated this film too. They also couldn’t stand the idea of a marshal asking for help, nor could they countenance his wife saving him.

In fact, many disliked the film. It was subversive for a Western to paint a bunch of frontier townsfolk as rotten cowards, happy to be delivered from evil but unwilling to face up to it themselves. The idea of a lawman standing up to protect an ungrateful populace was a new one. It called into question the whole concept of the struggle to civilize the Wild West. Was it worth the effort? Does the taming of the lawless lead to the creation of just another community full of the flawed?

Foreman’s script examines the myth of the rugged individual as well. Is it noble for a man to still act in the right, although all may be against him? It would seem so. Gary Cooper won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the desperate, conflicted Kane. Now we routinely see a protagonist acting despite those around him, not because of them. Such was not the case in 1952.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Quiet Man.