High Noon

I love movies.  I have always loved movies, ever since my parents and siblings started taking me to movie theaters in the early 1950s when I was too young to go by myself.  I’m also thankful that early television filled a lot of hours with old movies from the 1930s and 1940s.  Thus, I was able to watch and fall in love with films made even before I was born.  And now I can write about these movies, especially the ones I love the most.

I’m going to start with High Noon (1952) because it was my brother Ted’s favorite film and he is not around to write about it himself.  He liked to knitpick films, so I’ll do it in his stead.  It is a Western directed by Fred Zinnemann, who also directed From Here to Eternity (1953).  There were a lot of Western movies in those days, but I think High Noon is one of the best.  It’s on my list of the top three, with Shane (Alan Ladd) and The Searchers (John Wayne).  It’s a simple story of a man who must stand alone and face the threat of being killed by a gang of four notorious gunmen, and on his wedding day to boot. 

“Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin’, on this, our weddin’ day.  Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin’, wait, wait along.  The noon day train will bring Frank Miller.  If I’m a man I must be brave.  And I must face that deadly killer, or lie a coward, a craven coward, or lie a coward in my grave.”

The film begins with this lovely ballad (which won the Academy Award for best song) written by Dimitri Tiomkin (music) and Ned Washington (lyrics) and sung by the legendary Tex Ritter, an old time Western movie star himself and the father of the actor, John Ritter.  The first image we see in this black and white film is Lee Van Cleef, making his film debut, waiting for two other men while sitting on a rock and smoking a cigarette in the middle of nowhere.  The three finally meet up and together they ride their horses into the little town of Hadleyville, somewhere out in the western United States in the late Nineteenth Century.  They are there to meet Frank Miller, a former local hot-shot, who, five years before had been convicted of murder.  He was sentenced to hang, but a higher court commuted it to life imprisonment.  Now he was pardoned and on his way back to Hadleyville on the noon train.  During his trial, Miller had made a death threat against the local marshall, Will Kane.  Now he’ll join up with his three compatriots to fulfill his threat.

Kane, on the other hand, has just gotten married and resigned his position as town marshall.  The newlyweds will leave by a horse-drawn buckboard to open a store in another town.  The telegraph operator interrupts the post-wedding festivities to deliver the message about Frank Miller to the town mayor, Kane, and the other guests.  What to do?  Everyone tells Kane to take his bride and run away.  At first, he agrees, but out on the trail he changes his mind.

Kane returns to town.  He resumes his position as town marshall, even though no one officially authorizes him to do so.  His Quaker wife doesn’t understand what is happening.  She is totally opposed to violence, which is a way of life to a man such as Kane who has had a long career as a lawman.  Maybe this was not a match made in Heaven.  Kane’s plan, using his status as the town marshall, is to organize a large group of volunteers (a posse) from the town to confront Miller and his gang.  Perhaps outnumbered, Miller will either be killed in a shootout or give up his threats against Kane.

Will Kane is played by the great Gary Cooper, who was 50 years-old when the movie was made.  For this performance, he won his second Academy Award for Best Actor (the first was Sergeant York in 1941).  Grace Kelly, who was all of 21, plays his bride, Amy.  I know that such age differences exist in life, but, in this case, I just don’t buy it.  They don’t look like a couple.  An older woman, at least in her thirties, would have worked much better.  Check out Dorothy McGuire who was 35 years-old at the time.  Kelly looks like Cooper’s daughter.

All of Kane’s efforts to seek aid from the very people he had protected for many years as town marshall fail for one reason or another.  All want him to leave so there won’t be any violence in their peaceful town.  There are a couple of interesting comments made along the way.  First, in a saloon, a customer mentions that Kane has two deputies, a man named Harvey plus a second man.  In the film, there is no second man.  The confusion is explained in the screenplay.  In it, there is a subplot about the second deputy who was out of town bringing back a fugitive from justice.  This subplot was cut from the film, but the line about two deputies, instead of one, was not. 

The second comment was made in the town church.  Someone mentioned that there was personal trouble between Miller and Kane.  Exactly!  It was personal.  Miller did not want to kill the town marshall; he wanted to kill Kane.  The next day, Kane’s replacement as town marshall would arrive.  Miller had no desire to kill him.  Not yet, anyway!  So, Kane was really trying to hide behind his badge as town marshall.  I don’t blame him, but he’s not playing straight with the townspeople.

One more little glitch!  Just before the beginning of the climatic scenes, there is a shot of Kane standing alone in the street, completely isolated.  The camera zooms up higher and higher to emphasize Kane as a lonely figure.  Unfortunately, if you look at the upper right hand corner of the frame, you see Los Angeles, circa 1951.  Not good! 

So Kane stands alone.  Even his wife abandons him as she can’t accept his choice of violence in dealing with his problem.  (In John Wayne’s Angel and the Badman, his Quaker girlfriend insists he not use violence when dealing with men who want to kill him.)  However, Kane will not run away, but will instead face Miller and his bunch.  Miller arrives on the noon train and the four march toward where they believe Kane to be, on the main street of Hadleyville.

I don’t believe that Miller clearly thought out his strategy.  They would go as a group, walking close together, until they found Kane.  I think it would have been better to have split up into at least two groups to try to find and surround Kane.  However, Frank’s brother, Ben (one of the gang), breaks ranks and also a window to steal a ladies’ hat to tie to his gunbelt as a good luck charm.  The noise alerts Kane as to the whereabouts of the killers.  He subsequently comes out from behind the four and kills the stupid brother, after first calling out his name.

Following this, Kane is chased around town by the remaining three until he runs into a stable full of horses.  Not a good idea, since there is no way out except the single way in.  The three have Kane pinned down as they are firing at him from multiple angles.  Then another blunder!  Lee Van Cleef’s character (who has no lines in the film) rushes into the barn with guns blazing.  Kane is well hidden in a loft above the horses and easily kills his adversary who made an excellent target.  Two down, two to go!  Did the Marx brothers plan this affair?  Next, Kane is able to escape the stable while riding out on one of the horses during a fire.

The remaining two gunmen chase Kane back down the main street to where he takes refuge in an empty store.  Again the two have Kane cornered and are firing at him from two different angles.  Good idea!  However, non-violent, Quaker Amy decides she must protect her brand-new husband by shooting one of the two remaining killers in the back, despite her avowed religious beliefs.  It seems definitely out of character for her to do this.  But, somebody has to kill these guys.

Frank Miller is now all alone.  He captures Amy, uses her as a human shield, and threatens to kill her unless Kane comes out of the store and face him in a final confrontation.  It seems as if Miller wants a fair fight, but Kane takes the opportunity to kill Miller when Amy is able to distract him.  Dummy!  Miller should have shot Kane when he first stepped out of the store.  All is fair in love and war.  At the end of the film, with all his enemies dead, Kane and his bride get back on their buckboard and again ride out of town.

I have poked some holes in this movie, but it should not stop you from watching a great Western.  After all, it’s a movie, not real life.  So some of the story was a little wacky, but the bottom line is that it’s very entertaining.  Besides the two Academy Awards mentioned above, it won two others (Best Musical Scoring and Best Editing) and was nominated for three more it did not win (Best Picture won by The Greatest Show on Earth, Best Director won by John Ford for The Quiet Man, and Best Screenplay won by The Bad and The Beautiful), for a total of seven nominations.  Please watch it and remember what I said.  Agree or not, we can talk about it later.