250. High Noon (1952)

Directed By Fred Zinnemann

Synopsis

Kane just got married and is about to retire from his Marshall job at a small town in the West. But Frank Miller is coming to town on the noon train, and Kane has to stop him. He goes around town searching for help to form a posse. His former deputy (Lloyd Bridges) quits out of jealousy in what was a bad week for him to stop sniffing glue. And in the end it is one man against four, he kills them and leaves the town with his new wife disgusted at the cowardly and passive nature of the inhabitants.

Review

This was something completely new in terms of Westerns a film with no great landscapes, with no dialogue for the first 4 minutes, with no action until the last 10, played nearly in real-time as an allegory to the witch hunts going on in the states of McCarthy.

And then even beyond all that it stands up even outside its historical context as the great film that it is. Gary Cooper plays one of the best Western heros, a hero that is also flawed, breaks down crying and admits he is afraid, but a man that no one will help.

The allegory is not heavy handed, the film is excellent even if you are not aware of it, the soundtrack is amazing in its contribution to the film's sense of impending doom, the editing is masterful, the cinematography ditto. If I had to choose a weak link here it would be Grace Kelly who although beautiful really is not the best actress in the world. Other than that it is a perfectly paced, superbly written, scored, edited and directed film, filmed in 28 days on a tiny budget.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Upon its release, the film was criticized by many filmgoers, as it did not contain such expected western archetypes as chases, violence, action, and picture postcard scenery. Rather, it presented emotional and moralistic dialogue throughout most of the film. Only in the last few minutes were there action scenes.

John Wayne strongly disliked the film because he felt it was an allegory for blacklisting, which he and his best friend Ward Bond had actively supported. In his Playboy interview from May 1971, Wayne stated he considered High Noon "the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life" and went on to say he would never regret having helped blacklist liberal screenwriter Carl Foreman from Hollywood. He later teamed up with director Howard Hawks to make Rio Bravo as a conservative response.

The great train arrival tension building scene, so many elements of future spaghetti westerns here, the faces, the music: