High Noon

High Noon (1952)

Runtime: 85 minutes

Directed by: Fred Zinnemann

Starring: Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado

From: Stanley Kramer Productions

This is one of the many classic Westerns out there, for good reason: 

Last night Turner Classic Movies played this film and as I need to see more Westerns (a refrain I've uttered at least a few times in the years I've been a member of this site) and this is one of the many classics in the genre.

The plot is simple yet effective: it is a tale told in real-time as the town marshal of a little burg in the New Mexico Territory (Gary Cooper) just got married to Grace Kelly and he is about ready to retire and start a new life... until he finds out a nasty villain he caught years ago just got released from jail and his gang arrives in town waiting for their boss to return. As this bad guy Frank Miller has sworn revenge before, Cooper knows that running away is an option but he instead wants to fight and end this once and for all. There is drama as various characters don't agree with this decision and Cooper's idea to form a posse is met with a lot of resistance, including some people that preferred the town when it was full of bad guys.

Naturally there is more and more tension as the clock is ticking and Cooper has more and more difficulty in trying to make this big stand. Plenty of interesting characters are seen throughout and several actors are seen that would become much more famous later... this includes Lloyd Bridges as the young deputy and Lee Van Cleef as a member of the villain's gang. The cast does pretty well; another name I'll bring up is Katy Jurado, who has a connection with both the protagonist and antagonist. The movie does have a lot of talking and much of the action does not occur until the end, yet it's never boring due to the characters and the real-time element.

There is an obvious allusion to the blacklisting occurring in Hollywood at the time. Wikipedia can explain that in detail for those that don't know but the panic against Communism was a hot-button issue at the time; the screenwriter Carl Foreman used to be a member of the Communist Party so no surprise that theme was present in this work and of course he was blacklisted. This is not a typical Western for the time and yet what the film is about is fascinating and not everything in the genre needs an over the top white hat hero that has zero fear no matter the circumstances.