What's the AFI project, you ask? For more information, or if you just enjoy my bemused ramblings, read here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/pippin06/archive/2008/3/1/25756.aspx
High Noon is on the following AFI lists:
The Original Top 100 (#33)
100 Most Heart-Pounding Movies (#20)
100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains (Will Kane is the #5 hero)
100 Greatest Film Songs (#25 - "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin)")
25 Film Scores (#10)
100 Most Inspiring Movies (#27)
The Revised Top 100 (#27
10 Top 10's (#2 Western)
Taking a break from more recent movie fare (and cutting into the string of message movies about Africa to which I alluded in my last entry), my weekly red envelope brought my next AFI film, High Noon. As this film is a western, and as westerns are my least favorite film genre, I had never seen it before. Now, when I say that westerns are my least favorite genre, repeatedly, it's not to say that I don't like westerns in general. There are some westerns that I do kind of like quite a bit, such as Wyatt Earp and Tombstone and Dances with Wolves and True Grit and the Searchers and Stagecoach and a few others. As a genre, though, it's not my favorite because westerns generally follow a largely predictable pattern, or formula, if you will. There is always a good guy - he could be upstandingly, heroically good or morally ambiguous with a heart of gold, but there's an undisputed good guy. There is always a bad guy - some doofus who wants to rob, cheat, steal, murder, and make general mayhem. He often has a sinister moustache. There is always a showdown or shootout or big battle with pistols and horses. Sometimes, there are Indians involved (which is problematic on all levels, but I'm not getting into that here). And there is almost always either a damsel in distress or a damsel with panache who could never be in distress because she's too busy standing by and fighting with her man to beat down the bad guys. Oh, and the good guys always win, and it's usually very dusty. And more often than not, there's a train involved. What is it about trains?
Ok, I admit it, I'm oversimplifying a bit. Even the best westerns, though, adhere to this formula at least in part, and High Noon is no exception. The best westerns are the best, however, because some part of the formula will be tweaked enough, even turned on its ear, to make that western film more special. High Noon is one of the special ones.
In the film, Will Kane (the ever-handsome Gary Cooper) is about to retire as the Hadleyville town marshal and settle down with his new Quaker and pacifist bride, Amy (Grace Kelly, very young), until he hears that the Miller gang is back in town, and that Frank Miller, who he sent up for murder and who was pardoned by the judge, is due on the noon train. Despite the townspeople's - and his wife's - constant protests and encouragements to leave, Will finds he can't go. He feels a duty and a loyalty to the town he served, and since the replacement marshal won't be arriving until the following day, Kane puts off his retirement in the hopes of rounding up a posse and making a stand against Miller, who will no doubt be bent on revenge. The trouble is, as he visits every able-bodied man he can think of, whom he at one time considered his friend, he finds himself standing alone, as each friend abandons him in turn. His deputy, Harvey (Lloyd Bridges), covets his job and his ex-mistress. His mentor (Lon Chaney, Jr.) is old, bitter, and tired. His other friends (one of which is played by Thomas Mitchell) don't want any trouble for the town and believe that Miller won't cause it if Will is good and gone. So, Will readies himself to face Miller and his gang and to stand up for what he believes.
High Noon is special because it tweaks the formula in a way that leaves me feeling very satisfied, at least, and in a way that was kind of groundbreaking for the year it was released (1952). Usually, the hero in a western, especially a classic western, would never show vulnerability. He would be balls-blazing courageous, ready to fight off the meanies about to besmirch his town. Will Kane is not that kind of hero. Oh, he's courageous alright and morally decent - he can't fathom leaving the town defenseless, even if there's a good chance that Miller might give it a pass if Will's not there. But: he's realistic. He knows he'll be outnumbered, and he knows that what he's doing may not be the wisest choice, when he could just run off to his honeymoon with Amy and forget the perils of being a town marshal. So: he asks for help. He does everything but beg for it, and he shows a vulnerable side that I haven't seen too often in our manly heroes, even in more modern western films. Gary Cooper played Kane with such a quiet grace, dignity, and integrity that sort of reminded me of a cowboy-version of Atticus Finch, it was easy to be taken in and, truly, inspired by the performance and the character. That's probably why this film pops up on the AFI's Inspiring films list, and that's probably why Cooper won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in this film.
The other way this western film is unique is the way director Fred Zinnemann and the screenwriters snuck in some sly social commentary. The townspeople in this film are kind of selfish, scared, and unwilling to do their part. They all agree that Will has served them righteously and excellently during his career, and yet, when he asks for their help, they turn tails and hide. This movie was produced during the rise of the Cold War and McCarthyism - reading the All Movie Guide description on the bottom of this Spout page provides the laundry list of Communist sympathizers and conservative patriots involved in the film. And yet, on one point, they all seemingly agreed: the reactions of the country at large were, perhaps, selfish and scared and over-the-top, not unlike Hadleyville's finest. Apparently, John Wayne, a conservative himself, thought the film un-American for the way it depicted the responses of the masses, but for my money, this film is quite American because it exemplified free speech in art by providing a mirror for the moviegoing public at a time when the message would have been controversial. Some of the subtext of this film is timeless in that it still applies today.
Technically, this film had some unique and excellent elements. Much has been made of the score; it won an Oscar and cropped up on the AFI's top 25. I liked it because it was not a conventional score for a western - which often relies heavily on harmonicas and rolling basses. This score combined some of those traditionally western instruments with a full orchestra. Then, it was combined with that theme song sung by Tex Ritter, which at first I thought was kind of amusingly hokey, and yet, I find myself humming it two days later. Plus, if written just for the film, it was a perfect musical summation of the plot and, yet, profound enough to stand on its own. I also liked the costumes, though I wondered what year this was set in, which was never mentioned.
The only thing I didn't like about High Noon was how the story being told had some holes in it that normally would have been fleshed out. The events of High Noon transpire in real time, however, 50 years before 24 thought of it, so I don't fault the screenwriters or filmmakers too much - there's only so much one is going to learn in 85 minutes, and that concept alone was highly original for its time. There were quite a few references to past events that were never explained, though, and I would have liked to have known more without making so many assumptions. The Miller gang as villains become more of an abstract, even cartoonish, only because their leader is referenced as "crazy," and the viewer is told that he murdered someone, but that's as much as we're given. And we know Will had liaisons with Helen (Katy Jurado) at one point or another, possibly because he saved her from Frank Miller, with whom she also had liaisons, but that's an inference I'm making even now. There are other such quick references, and, like I said, it's not a big complaint from me. Restricting the events to real time kept the story simple, but I pay attention to the details, so I notice when bits are left hanging.
My only other tiny gripe is the fact that Gary Cooper had to be at least in his late 40s by this movie, and Grace Kelly looked like she was 16 (in reality, he was 51, and she was 22)! I know men were likely to take young brides in the old west, but that took some suspension of disbelief on my part. As a romantic couple, I didn't see the chemistry; they felt a little awkward, really. I can't imagine anyone else in either part, but it's just something I noticed from the outset that I couldn't shake. The film wasn't about the romance between these two, though. High Noon is more about standing up for what one knows is right against that which s/he knows is wrong, so that's why this reaction of mine is tiny at best.
In any event, even as a western (and I say that with the highest respect), High Noon was more enjoyable than most. I really loved Gary Cooper and the Will Kane character the best; I think, without him, the film would not have been the pinnacle it eventually became. I wish Spout had an additional rating, like Netflix, where you can say "really like" between "like" and "love." That's kind of where I am with this picture. I didn't love it - it was a western, like I said, and that's my personal bias, but I liked it a whole lot better than lots of other westerns. I see this film as an 8.5 in my ratings world for those eensy peccadillos (not armadillos) that I previously mentioned. The test doesn't really pass, though. As much as I really like High Noon, I don't really like it enough, western or no, to watch it repeatedly, so I see no need to purchase it. It's a great movie, though, and well worth the watch - besides, at 85 minutes' running time, it's minimal risk as movie-watching goes.