High Noon

A masterpiece of tightly plotted drama/suspense in what would become The Adult Western. Normally, one is happiest on your wedding day, but former lawman Will Kane is troubled.

An old nemesis is due on the noon train, and his gang is in town to meet him. He's sworn to kill the man who sent him to prison, so the expected action is to flee. But weighed down with a new bride and traveling in a buckboard, there's no chance of escape.

Seeking help to at least face down the gang, Will Kane returns to town, and finds that everybody either won't or can't Do The Right Thing. The inaction of the town is a thinly disguised parable of The Cold War, with the U.S. standing alone against the Red Menace

As Will Kane walks through the silent town, ...

This is just a dirty little village in the middle of nowhere. Nothing that happens here is really important.

Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is a retiring lawman all set to leave the town of Hadleyville with his new bride Amy (Grace Kelly). But word comes that a notorious gunslinger he put in prison has been released and is heading to town with his gang intent on bloody revenge. With a sense of fearless duty Kane decides to stay and sets about enlisting a posse, however, he finds that nobody in the town that he made safe for everyone will aid him in his mission.

The 1950s saw a big shift in styles for the American Western. After the yee-haw Cowboy Vs Indians excess of the 40s, the decade was ushered in by such films as Broken Arrow. Showing t...

I am guessing that High Noon is one of those seminal films that influenced the western genre immensely for a long time. The fifties? That is back when we wanted our heroes to be heroic. No greed or cruelty or inconsistent morals were allowed. Marshall Will Kane states near the beginning that he has to stick around for the evil Frank Miller to show up. Then he admittedly has a bit of a wobble when it seems the whole town, including his new Quaker wife, is telling him to leave. It is his time in the wilderness fighting the devil of easy-ways-out, But in the end he is Marshall Will Kane sticking around because it was the right thing to do. Hero time, and it works.

It is not all that works. This movie uses a cant miss formula to build up sus...

Gary Cooper is great in this tightly-packed revenge western. Newly married to "Amy" (the sparingly used but effective Grace Kelly) he has decided to stop being the town marshal and live a more peaceful life. It's on that very day, however, that he discovers that the outlaw "Miller" (Ian MacDonald), whom he sent to jail years earlier has been released and is heading back on the noon train to settle some old scores. "Kane" initially concludes that discretion is the better side of valour and decides to skedaddle, but a change of heart sets up a potential conflict that he soon discovers his cowardly townsfolk have little stomach to support him through. Fred Zinnemann allows Cooper and the very effective Thomas Mitchell as the spineless mayor "H...

When a film becomes a manifesto of political discontent.

Usually, we are used to seeing extremely virile western films, full of masculine strength and American pride. And in fact the cowboy is a symbol of American strength and persistence: he is a loner, individualist, independent, who faces the most arduous situations with tenacity and ingenuity. However, this film is much sadder and even darker: faced with the arrival of a fearsome bandit, willing to take revenge for having been arrested, the sheriff of a Wild West village, who is about to be relieved of his post after a few years of very good and selfless service to the community, asks everyone for help and everyone leaves him to his fate, they even laugh at him! At a certain poin...