doug-balch Review of High Noon

High Noon (1952)

Overrated Western

[4/10 · 25 June 2010]

Like "Shane", "High Noon" is another Western that has ridden to film critic heaven on the back of Oscar victories. It's up to me to point out that the emperor has no clothes. I'm not saying it's a bad movie, just that it is overrated.

Let me start with the positives:

• The movie is well paced. There is good tension. Most characters are well developed. It is well acted.

• Katy Kurtado, who has the only quality supporting role as a Mexican store owner/slut, has a great line where she tells Lloyd Bridges that Gary Cooper is better than him because "Hees a mehn!" Loved that.

• OK, I'm done with positives now.

Here are the negatives:

• The basic plot doesn't make sense. This movie is often referred to as an example of an individual's steely resolve to stand up against wrong, even though abandoned by friends and society. But Kane runs like a rabbit as soon as he finds out the Millers are coming. It's only when he gets a couple of miles out of town that he realizes that he only has an hour head start on them. He tells his wife that they have no choice but to go back to town. "They'll just catch us alone out in the open prairie," he says to Grace Kelly. "My only chance is to stay in town and get help".

So, Kane did not stay out of principle. He stayed only because he had no other choice.

Yet for the rest of the movie, Kane doesn't make that argument to the townspeople. In the final church scene, there are seven or eight men who are strongly inclined to support Kane. However, town elder Thomas Mitchell wants to avoid bad publicity and tells Kane the solution is for him to run.. Why doesn't he reply to Mitchell, "You're telling me to commit suicide, it's too late to run. I need help now and you guys owe it to me". Surely if he made that simple, compelling argument, his supporters would have come to his aid. Instead, he just glares at everyone and storms out.

• The Grace Kelly character makes absolutely no sense. How can she abandon her husband five minutes after she marries him because four guys want to kill him? He already told her that to leave town was virtual suicide.

• The age difference between Grace Kelly and Gary Cooper is disturbing and distracting. She looks like she's fifteen, he looks like her grandfather. Cooper was only 50 when they made this, but sadly, he was not a well man at this stage of this life. He looks closer to 60 in this movie.

• Kane's the hero of the story, but he's hard to admire. He seems too afraid of the bad guys. Also, he only prevails after his Quaker wife dry gulches Ben Miller. Critics wax poetic about this aspect of the movie, telling us that "High Noon" was the first "anti-Western", where the hero isn't brave.

Fair enough, but I don't like anti-Westerns. I'm a Western fan. If I was anti-Western, I would watch musicals or romantic comedies, not "High Noon".

• The principal heavy is almost completely uncharacterized and is off screen for most of the movie. When he finally shows up, he looks like an accountant on vacation at a five star dude ranch. Only "Butch Cassidy" has a more poorly developed bad guy.

• What's so interesting about this movie being a metaphor for the HUAC investigation of communists in Hollywood? Who cares?

• And while we are on that subject, if this is movie such a liberal metaphor, what's with the tirades against weak courts releasing murderers? Isn't that a right wing rant? My head was spinning through this whole movie. "Hounding Communists is bad and so is trial by jury."

• This is a strictly back lot "town" Western. While movies with similar story lines obviously have few opportunities to film scenic backdrops, may directors find ways around this (George Stevens in "Shane", for example). This movie feels less like a real Western and more like a intellectual Broadway stage play with cowboy hats and spurs for props.

• There is not an iota of comic relief. I mean nada, niente, nothing. I read that Jack Elam's drunk had a comic scene deleted. Was this to keep the movie to its gimmicky "real time" length? If so, it wasn't worth it.

• Another plot hole. Mrs. Ramirez is so afraid of Frank Miller's vengeance upon her that she fire sales her business and skips town. She then proceeds to deliberately catch Miller's eye at the train station. He hardly seems to recognize her, much less attempt to punish her for her sins against him. Maybe Kane should have bought a train ticket too. It seems to provide full protection against ex-con gunslingers bent on revenge.

And while we're on that subject, why would the Miller gang let Kane's wife waltz out of town on the train? Their many friends in town would surely point her out to them. Another reason Kane can't run. He has to stay to protect her, even though she's abandoned him for.....well, for staying to protect her? Like I said, the plot is irrational.

• The ending was much too abrupt. Another time saving measure?

• Finally, I'd like to know how the burning barn mysteriously extinguished itself. At the end all the townsfolk are crowding around the dead bodies, when they should have been scrambling to keep their homes from burning down.