Review of High Noon (1952) by Andrjet — 16 Jul 2015

Righteouses’ Path is a Steep and Lonely Wait.

Hadleyville’s clocks hands beat the same time of our **** as a result of a coincidence between reality and narration: That’s the driving force of High Noon. Under a merciless, clear sky we are thrown on a Far West town, and we are guided into it by Dimitri Tiomkin’s leitmotif theme and a disreputable trio (Miller’s gang).

Zinnemann’s studied and perfect frames describe the Western revenge’canon embodied in the silent action of Frank Miller’s mysterious remains. A name which frightens the whole Hadleyville and it also upsets Will Kane (Gary Cooper) so much that he renounces to go away with his new bride Amy (Grace Kelly) in order to obey to his duty: Defending the community in his last day as a sheriff even.

And here is the duel between the law guardian Will Kane and the lawbreaker Frank Miller: On one side the heavy presence of a lonely man and on the other side the vague absence of a ruthless man. A duel that recreates itself upon the axes of time: It re-emerges from the past (Kane arrested Miller) and projects itself in the future (noon running on the railway).

Everything tends to that moment in a spiral of increasingly tension while minutes pass identical to us and Kane; and we are literally suck in that dusty town where Will Kane is wandering in search of allies to face Miller and his gang. But as time goes by the more we understand Kane will be alone. Even Amy leaves him, because she is the virginal principle of nonviolence, and also she is waiting for that fatal noon (not definitely to stay but to get on board on the train).

She’s going to move out just like the Mexican Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado) is planning to do. Probably because she had been Miller’s woman, and has been Kane’s fiancé, and then she’s the girl of Kane’s vice Harvey Pell (a young Lloyd Bridges, well known for his role as McCroskey in Airplane!), a symbol of that pretentious youth which claims for a vested right power.

Zinnemann is a punctilious surveyor who doesn’t leave anything to chance, who upholsters everything with symbolisms as bright as the West blinding light. So we encounter some archetypical figures: inhabitants’ cowardly selfishness not inclined to help he who has fought strenuously to bring back order in town; uncaring politics represented by Henderson, who takes Kane’s side except saying his presence threatens the town in fine; finally judges’ recklessness who have turned Miller’s life sentence into probation.

Will Kane is all alone and he has to fight against everyone. He becomes the paradox of a society in which only weapons can guarantee compliance and civility. He is waiting alone for Frank Miller. And we can see him in a backside-dolly-frame walking through a disarming desert, lost in the dust of the inactive Hadleyville.

Finally the whistle of the train reveal us Frank Miller’s traits (Ian MacDonald) but it’s not only the alert of an imminent fate: It’s also the sound of Amy’s love for Will. The sheriff is no longer alone to fight Miller’s gang: the justice puts back in order in the sequence of gunshots, a marriage does the same in front of Frank Miller’s corpse. Yet a society is definitely split and mirrored in the dull sparkle of a sheriff star tossed on the ground. And Tex Ritter’s Do Not Forsake Me takes us away from there, beyond the high noon of a man too much people have betrayed but one person has saved.