High Noon

As the clock ticks inexorably toward the high noon of our impending war with Iraq and the din of criticism of President Bush as a reckless cowboy determined to be the world’s policeman becomes more shrill, it is impossible to avoid thinking of that greatest Western, and one of the greatest American movies of any genre, “High Noon.”

For those of you who never saw it or don’t recall it, here’s the plot — from an excellent review by James Berardinelli.

[Gary] Cooper plays Marshal Will Kane, and, when High Noon opens, it’s a little after 10 o’clock in the morning, and he is being married to Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), a woman less than half his age. At the same time, trouble has arrived in Kane’s sleepy Western town. Three outlaws, the henchmen of convicted murderer Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), are waiting at the railroad station, where Miller, recently freed from prison, is expected on the noon train. He has one goal: revenge, and the target of his hatred is Kane, the man who brought him down. Kane’s friends, including the town’s mayor (Thomas Mitchell), the local judge (Otto Kruger), and the former Marshal, Martin Howe (Lon Chaney), urge him to flee, but he can’t. Against the wishes of his Quaker wife and with no one in the town willing to stand beside him, Kane prepares to face Miller and his gang alone.

High Noon is about loyalty and betrayal. Loyalty on Kane’s part – even when everyone deserts him, he stands his ground, though it seems inevitable that the action will cost him his life. And betrayal on the town’s part. Many of the locals are agreed that they owe their prosperity to Kane, but they will not help him or defend him, because they believe his cause to be hopeless. There are even those who welcome Miller’s return.

When the French and Germans call Bush a “cowboy,” I don’t think they have Gary Cooper in mind. Maybe they should. In any event, they could certainly learn something about one important strain of American values in the 84 minute running time of “High Noon” that they don’t seem to have learned elsewhere.

The film resonates with our current situation to a degree that is almost eerie. Take a look at the long synopsis/commentary/review, with extended stretches of dialog, by Tim Dirks. As Dirks puts it, the film

tells the tale of a solitary, stoic, honor-bound marshal/hero, past his prime and already retired, who was left desolate and abandoned by the Hadleyville townspeople he had faithfully protected for many years. Due to the townspeople’s cowardice, physical inability, self-interest and indecisiveness, he is refused help at every turn against a revenge-seeking killer and his gang. Fearful but duty-bound, he eventually vanquishes the enemy, thereby sparing the civilized (democratic) town the encroachment of barbaristic frontier justice brought by the deadly four-man group of outlaws.

All the upstanding local citizens try to persuade Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) to leave town before the dread outlaw Frank Miller arrives at noon, including his brand new Quaker/pacifist wife, Grace Kelly.

Kane: I sent a man up five years ago for murder. He was supposed to hang. But up North, they commuted it to life and now he’s free. I don’t know how. Anyway, it looks like he’s coming back.

Amy: I still don’t understand.

Kane: …He was always wild and kind of crazy. He’ll probably make trouble.

Amy: But that’s no concern of yours, not anymore.

Kane: I’m the one who sent him up.

Amy: Well, that was part of your job. That’s finished now. They’ve got a new marshal.

Kane: He won’t be here until tomorrow. Seems to me I’ve got to stay. Anyway, I’m the same man with or without this. (He pins his badge on his vest.)

Amy: Oh, that isn’t so.

Kane: I expect he’ll come lookin’ for me. Three of his old bunch are waiting at the depot.

Amy: That’s exactly why we ought to go.

Kane: They’ll just come after us, four of ’em, and we’d be all alone on the prairie.

Amy: We’ve got an hour.

Kane: What’s an hour?…What’s a hundred miles? We’d never be able to keep that store, Amy. They’d come after us and we’d have to run again, as long as we live.

Amy: No we wouldn’t, not if they didn’t know where to find us. Oh Will! Will, I’m begging you, please let’s go.

Kane: I can’t.

Amy: Don’t try to be a hero. You don’t have to be a hero, not for me.

Kane: I’m not trying to be a hero. If you think I like this, you’re crazy…. Look Amy, this is my town. I’ve got friends here. I’ll swear in a bunch of special deputies and with a posse behind me, maybe there won’t even be any trouble.

Today, it’s almost impossible to avoid viewing Frank Miller, the dreaded outlaw, as Saddam; the respectable, civilized local burghers who urge acquiescence as the French and Germans of their day; and the fearfrul, fretful, pacifist wife as the Democrats.

Dirks describes one of Kane/Cooper’s efforts to recruit allies:

Kane is determined to gather support from another one of the town’s institutions – the church. He interrupts the Sunday service as the minister (Morgan Farley) reads scripture from the Book of Malachi, Chapter 4: “For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedness shall be…” The marshal is desperate for help – to find volunteers to be appointed as special deputies. He is curtly reminded that he didn’t “see fit” to be married in that church: “What could be so important to bring you here now?” Kane simply replies: “I need help.” He admits that he isn’t “a church-going man,” and that he wasn’t married there – because his wife is a Quaker. “But I came here for help, because there are people here.”

He appeals to the church-going Christians about his dilemma: “It looks like Frank Miller’s comin’ back on the noon train. I need all the special deputies I can get.” A number of men impulsively step forward to volunteer, but are interrupted by Cooper (Harry Shannon), one of the members:

Before we go rushing out into something that ain’t gonna be so pleasant, let’s be sure we know what this is all about. What I want to know is this. Ain’t it true that Kane ain’t no longer Marshal? And ain’t it true there’s personal trouble between him and Miller?

Jonas Henderson sums up the debate by first complimenting Kane:

What this town owes Will Kane here it can never pay with money – and don’t ever forget it. He’s the best marshal we ever had, maybe the best marshal we’ll ever have. So if Miller comes back here today, it’s our problem, not his. It’s our problem because this is our town. We made it with our own hands out of nothing. And if we want to keep it decent, keep it growing, we’ve got to think mighty clear here today. And we’ve gotta have the courage to do what we think is right no matter how hard it is.

While he believes Miller is the town’s concern and problem, a violent shoot-out would also create a bad image for Hadleyville up North, especially for financial growth and investment support from Northern business interests:

There’s gonna be fighting when Kane and Miller meet and somebody’s gonna get hurt, that’s for sure. Now, people up North are thinking about this town – thinking mighty hard, thinking about sending money down here to put up stores and to build factories. It’ll mean a lot to this town, an awful lot. But if they’re gonna read about shooting and killing in the streets, what are they gonna think then? I’ll tell ya. They’re gonna think this is just another wide-open town and everything we worked for will be wiped out. In one day, this town will be set back five years. And I don’t think we can let that happen.

And so, because of the necessity of the town’s commercial self-interests and the preservation of public relations, respectable businessman Henderson advises Kane (“a mighty brave man, a good man”) to flee town for the good of the local economy:

He didn’t have to come back here today. But for his sake and the sake of this town, I wish he hadn’t. Because if he’s not here when Miller comes, my hunch is there won’t be any trouble, not one bit. Tomorrow, we’ll have a new Marshal and if we can all agree here to offer him our services, I think we can handle anything that comes along. And to me, that makes sense. To me, that’s the only way out of this. Will, I think you’d better go while there’s still time. It’s better for you and it’s better for us.

Of course we now know that Gary Cooper stood up to the evil that threatened his town, even though the townspeople gave him no help, and killed the bad guys. At the last minute Grace Kelly decided to stay in town and fight with her husband rather than escape on the last train out of town.

The movie ends with Cooper taking off his badge, throwing it in the dust with contempt, and leaving town with his wife. For that reason, among others, “High Noon” was regarded in 1952, and long afterward, as a liberal movie. The screenwriter, Carl Foreman, was blacklisted shortly after making it, and many have interpreted the movie as expressing Foreman’s (and other Hollywood liberals’) contempt for American cowardice in the face of McCarthyism. Indeed, both reviews linked above refer to John Wayne’s describing the movie as “unAmerican.”

During the war in Vietnam it was liberals who rejected what they took to be the movie’s message. Anti-war protesters thought “High Noon” insidiously supported the “domino theory,” based on what they thought to be the outmoded and inapplicable “Munich analogy” — stop evil before it spreads.

That’s the damndest thing about history: times change. Given our “global community’s” current conflict between factions who think of each other as appeasers and cowboy policemen, we could take moral instruction from much worse sources than this classic American movie.

Stand tall.

Update – Alan Dale has a tour de force (pardon my, or any, French) discussion of “High Noon” as political allegory over on Kitchen Cabinet. Go read it.

I think Dale’s comments are impressive, and, having just written the first thing in my life that even looks like it pretends to be a movie review, I certainly would not presume to disagree with him about anything he says about the movie, except perhaps noting my suspicion that everthing simple is not necessarily simplistic. Maybe that’s true in movies, but not in real life. Not being a lawyer, I would also defer to Mr. Dale’s Malcolm colleagues in the Cabinet, who are (or are on their way), as to whether the bad guys got “blown away outside the confines of the law.” Since the villains had shown up in town for the purpose of taking revenge on the Gary Cooper character, the marshal who had arrested the Villain in Chief just released from jail, I suspect a persuasive argument can be made that Cooper’s self defense was well within the confines of the law. Luckily, we don’t have to depend on a Security Council determination on that.

Say What? (2)

  1. The Tortured Artist March 8, 2003 at 1:48 pm | | Reply

    American Cowboy

    John over at Discriminations thinks that the European labeling of Bush as a cowboy might not be the insult they think it is…

  2. The Daily Rant March 14, 2003 at 8:32 am | | Reply

    Missing Carnival Entry

    “High Noon” – Hell, I didn’t even have to think of a movie title theme for this entry by John

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