Cinema
High Noon
Fred Zinnemann · 1952
Synopsis
Marshal Will Kane marries Amy Fowler, a Quaker, and hands in his badge to leave town with her. Then word comes that Frank Miller, whom he had sent to the gallows, has been pardoned and is arriving on the noon train; his brother Ben and two accomplices are already waiting for him at the station. Kane gives up leaving and goes around town looking for deputies: the judge, the mayor, the former marshal, his deputy Harvey Pell, the churchgoers. The clock ticks on.
Context
The screenwriter Carl Foreman was called before the House committee during the shoot, blacklisted, and left for Britain; he said that life had caught up with fiction and that he had become Gary Cooper's character. Zinnemann, on the contrary, denied any political intent. John Wayne considered the film the most un-American thing he had ever seen, and Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo with him in 1959, because he did not like High Noon. Filming ran from 5 September to 13 October 1951.
Who it is for
An eighty-five-minute western, in black and white; the 2020 French combo has a dubbed track.
Prizes and reception
Four Oscars from seven nominations, including Gary Cooper's, and added to the National Film Registry in its very first year, 1989.
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