Review of High Noon

Introduction

Allegedly based on a magazine story entitled ‘The Tin Man’ by John W. Cunningham, Carl Foreman’s masterful screenplay in fact bares little, if any, resemblance to this original article, and is instead one of the most original westerns ever produced and certainly a groundbreaking achievement for its time. The story is simple: Sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) on the day of his marriage to stunning quaker bride Amy (Grace Kelly) is informed that his nemesis Frank Miller is coming back to town on the noon train to engage in a spot of violent retribution. Hearing of this, Kane decides to stay, to the dismay of his new bride, and the fearful inaction of the townspeople, who one by one desert Kane in his hour of need, as destiny approaches ever closer.

Video

Fuzzy, mucky, with the dirt sort of digitized into ugly pixilated spats. Eurgh. That said, its cleaner than any VHS version I’ve seen, and Floyd Crosby’s darkly realist photography is inherently harshly lit anyway, but we’ve seen that older B/W movies can get excellent DVD transfers from the likes of Warner’s ‘Casablanca’ disc, and for such a visually compelling film, this inauspicious grey blur isn’t up to standard. Although, at least its better than Universal’s other Hollywood classic, the diabolical ‘Citizen Kane’ transfer.

Audio

Pretty bad as well. Crackling (allegedly stereo) dolby digital soundtrack which again is as strong as any VHS, but utterly unremarkable for DVD.

Features

A nice documentary about the making of the film, with surprising interviews with the likes of director Fred Zinneman and the late Lloyd Bridges. Noted US film critic Leonard Maltin offers his own take on the picture and its interesting enough, if a little too cosmetic an appraisal. To add to this, there’s the original theatrical trailer, some poster and film still galleries and some very brief production notes.

Conclusion

Remade in 1981 as the lame sci-fi thriller ‘Outland’, ‘High Noon’s tale of an everyman placed in an impossible position as his former friends and colleagues leave him high and dry through fear and intimidation isn’t just a timeless story of individualism, bravery and the fallacy of civilization but a clear cry for sanity against McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which was grilling for signs of communist sympathy with a witch-hunt mentality at the time of ‘High Noon’s production. Indeed, with Hollywood’s finest ratting out their friends to the committee its no surprise that Foreman’s screenplay has more than a tinge of bitterness and cynicism for the human condition, proliferated as it is by a frightened townsfolk who just want to save their own hides.

Cooper however, gives the movie a moving, desperate, and all too human feeling of crumbling idealism, sour rejection, mysterious duty and yet all too present fear for the possible doom that hangs over him. Cooper starred in many westerns, but ‘High Noon’ is some of his finest work, Zinneman lending him a compassion and complexity vastly different from the stick-figure characterizations of the usual western heroes. Cooper is afraid, a factor which simply complicates the blur between realism, foolhardiness and bravery. Zinneman was at the height of his powers in ‘High Noon’ but this is Foreman’s movie through and through, with the supporting characters detailed with believable and sympathetic human foibles that prevent them committing to action, Foreman could just as easily be writing about his own colleagues. Take particular notice of Kelly, in a star making turn and Katy Jurado who delivers a feminine strength years ahead of its time.

‘High Noon’s unconventional presentation: an all-talk, real-time narrative, driven by Dimitri Tiomkin’s weird and wonderful score that, like the film, embellishes in the lived-in cliches of the pre-packaged western genre while at the same time subverting those cliches and adding elements of film-noir character dimension and subtle but nerve-wracking suspense. Foreman himself left America before the film had even been released, a fact that makes ‘High Noon’s spare, desolate and acrid landscape of one man’s stand against evil as a humble populace shuttle off into the margins, as potent as it was when first released.