The 1952 Western High Noon Is As Relevant Today As It Was In It's Initial Release

Will Kane (Gary Cooper) has been good to the town of Hadleyville, New Mexico. He's been a loyal Marshall to this town for as long he can remember, making some enemies on the criminal side of things in the process but also making even more friends as he cleaned up the town and made it a safer place for people to live. Today, he's married his sweetheart Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly) and in the process, he's retiring from his duties as the Marshall of Hadleyville, New Mexico. The wedding between these two is a time of bliss and joy for both Kane and Fowler but it's cut short by news that none other than Frank Miller (Ian McDonald) has returned to town seeking vengeance against Will Kane.

Miller's reputation as a bloodthirsty criminal precedes, everyone in the town fears him mightily. Everyone, that is, except for Kane, who decides to meet Miller for a gun-toting showdown at Noon. Fowler is against the idea and decides to leave town just before Noon instead of seeing her husband get inevitably slaughtered by Miller and his three associates. Meanwhile, Will Kane decides to wrangle up a posse of deputies to fight alongside himself against Frank Miller, but he finds himself struggling to convince any of the townspeople he's protected for years to take up arms along side him. Noon is growing nearer and Kane is finding himself more and more isolated by the town he thought he knew oh so well...

Fred Zinnemann's 1952 film High Noon is one of those motion pictures that can create a whole world of captivating characters in a short amount of time. Running at only 84 minutes, High Noon is still able to carve out numerous distinctive individual characters and lives for those who inhabit Hadleyville, New Mexico. By having Will Kane travel across this town he's served so diligently for so long to search for potential deputies, we get to catch glimpses at assorted people (like churchgoers, a scrappy 16-year-old and an elderly former Marshall suffering from arthritis), each with their own viewpoints on whether or not they should help Kane in his goal to stand up against Kane that illuminate on who these people really are at their core.

Like how Sean Baker's 2015 feature Tangerine made every inch of Los Angeles covered in idiosyncratic individuals, the various denizens of the town High Noon takes place in truly come alive in Kane's journey, which heightens the level of tragedy in his fruitless pursuit of help in his hour of need. These are people he clearly knows all too well, that he's cared for for oh so many years and the majority of them are willing to turn their back on him due to how notoriously dangerous and deadly Frank Miller is. It's also interesting to mention how the townspeople refusal to stick their own necks out for Kane was apparently intended a metaphor for the Red Scare occurring in the entertainment industry in the 1950's, where people could be accused of having communist sympathies and be blacklisted from working and individuals refusing to stand up and defend them, even if they were innocent, in worries of being blacklisted for being accused of carrying Communist sympathies.

I had read about those parallels prior to watch High Noon and viewing the film proper with that subtext in mind, it does feel like a very applicable real-life parallel that demonstrates how fear from powerful forces can make people stand by as injustices go on before their very eyes. That's more self-centered facet of humanity didn't just appear in the Red Scare of the 1950's, it was always around throughout history as the specifically period era setting of High Noon demonstrates and it's a concept that still resonates in today's political climate. Carl Foreman's screenplay for High Noon is clearly taking a cue from some of the best Western movies and using a period setting to make comments on American society and people in general that can still feel oh so relevant today.

The performance of Gary Cooper as Will Kane is another one of High Noon's best qualities, as Cooper is able to convincingly portray the dual sides of this character's personality, that of the lawman and the normal human being, with equal measures of panache. When Cooper has to drum up a more stern demeanor, you can immediately see why he thrived as a lawman since he's able to be appropriately intimidating. Meanwhile, Cooper brings a similar level of authenticity to the moments where Cooper has to appear more vulnerable in trying to appeal to the emotional side of the citizens he's protected for all this time with this element of his performance absolutely selling how Will Kane, at the end of the day, is a human being capable of both fear and bravery like any other person.

Grace Kelly, who looks like a mixture of Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie to my eyes, puts in fine work as Kane's significant other, with her internal struggle between standing by her husband and avoiding more of the sort of gunfire carnage that took the lives of her brother and father also gets plenty of screentime to be fleshed out in a thorough manner. That's a really nice touch and so is the repeated use of the song The Ballad Of High Noon by Tex Ritter, which pops up throughout the film after being heard in the opening scene. What's cool about the recurring usage of this tune is that, as the movie progresses and the Frank Miller showdown grows closer, the song becomes more and more ominous sounding in its instrumental accompaniment. That's a really great way to convey the dire nature of this situation Will Kane finds himself in the middle of and the fact that the final scene of High Noon offers a conclusion to this story that's far from tidy but rather has the actions of the townspeople refusing to come to Kane's aid linger just seals it that High Noon knows how to handle intensity with thoughtfulness and finesse.