HIGH NOON

HIGH NOON

SOME of the best films are the simplest. The storyline in High Noon has few complications. Each scene – right from the opening credits – goes straight to the point. Each scene moves the story along as the clock on the wall relentlessly ticks off the minutes to the arrival of the noon train in the remote frontier town of Hadleyville.
The film opens to the strains of Tex Ritter singing the theme song, Do not forsake me, oh my Darling. Under the rolling credits, at the same time as three desperadoes converge on the town’s railway station to check that the noon train is on time, the retiring Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) is in the local courtroom, marrying Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly in her first role) a gorgeous Quaker girl.
It’s 10:35. News filters through that a notorious killer, Frank Millar, (Ian MacDonald) has been released from prison. He’s on the noon train and his declared aim is to meet up with the rest of the gang and kill Kane – the man who put him away – just as soon as he gets into town.
At first Kane and his new bride hitch up a horse-buggy but a short distance out of town he turns back. He has never run away from anything yet and isn’t about to start now. His new bride doesn’t understand his resolve to defend his town and his honour. She flounces off, declaring her intention to board the noon train herself – with or without Will. It’s up to him. Amy is only the first to desert him.
The rest of the film moves in real time as the clocks wears its way round towards noon. Everywhere Kane goes to seek help he is rebuffed by townspeople who always have good personal reasons for leaving him to his fate. His deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges) has a thing for his ex Helen Ramirez, (Katy Jurado) a local businesswoman. He feels guilty about taking over from Kane in her affections and resents the fact that Kane hasn’t appointed him as his successor. Kane will just have to do without him.
The tension builds up as Kane travels from pillar to post to get support to take down Millar and his gang. The judge, the respectable church-going folk – all the good people who cheered him on when it cost them nothing – make their excuses and walk away or hide in their homes. The awful truth dawns on Kane. He is going to have to fight alone.
The train arrives. Kane’s wife sees the gang heading into town to kill her new husband and gets off the train. Her place is by her man. Kane manages to kill two gang members. Amy, valuing her man over her pacifist principles kills the third, only to be taken hostage by Millar. She struggles as the two men face one-another down. They open fire. Millar falls. Kane’s shot has taken him down. The townspeople come out at cheer the man they refused to help. In contempt he throws his Star of office into the dust. He and his wife and ride off without looking back.
Not surprisingly, High Noon did well in the 1952 Oscars. Cooper won best actor. The movie also won best song for Do Not Forsake Me, best musical score and best film editing. It was controversial, though. John Wayne, who had turned down the role of Kane, called it the ‘most un-American’ film he had ever seen, probably because the screenwriter Carl Foreman had once been a member of the American communist party. It was thought to be a thinly veiled allegory on many of the great and the good who looked the other way when Senator Joe McCarthy was blacklisting communist sympathisers and other leftists. Perhaps so. Nevertheless, many others admired it for the Marshall’s emphasis on courage and duty despite the odds against him.