HIGH NOON: Signature Edition Blu-ray (UA 1952) Olive Media
Often
referenced as ‘the existential western’,
Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952) is
a controversial classic that arguably broke the mold and matured an entire
genre from its cut and dry Saturday matinee heroics. There had been others who
endeavored to add girth to the stories set against this stark and uniquely
American landscape; most notably, John Ford. Yet, for all his lyrical tomes,
Ford’s vision of the West remained firmly anchored to an impossibly plainspoken
sense of nobility; the belief and promise of the frontier experience left intact
for others to discover, perennially infused with a streak of the adventurer’s
spirit. Zinnemann’s impressions are
quite different; far less flattering and infinitely more bizarre. The
townspeople who populate the remote outpost of Hadleyville in High Noon are all stricken with a
chronic ennui for their way of life; tired, even of life itself, neither
seeking greener pastures beyond their picket fences, or perhaps unable to
acknowledge them as such from the vantage of abject surrender. Enfeebled town
prophet, Martin Howe (Lon Chaney Jr.) puts it thus to Marshal Will Kane (Gary
Cooper), who has come to him seeking counsel and advice. “You risk your skin catching killers and the juries turn them loose so
they can come back and shoot at you again. If you're honest you're poor your
whole life and in the end you wind up dying all alone on some dirty street. For
what? For nothing. For a tin star. People gotta talk themselves into law and
order before they do anything about it. Maybe because down deep they don't care.
They just don't care.”
And indeed,
beneath the cordial – and collective – refusal of each member of this town
council Kane has tapped to stand tall alongside him, there is more than just
the fear of death; a sort of repressed resentment for Kane’s principles, the
law, and, its inability to keep a desperado like Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald)
outside their borders for good. Better now to allow Miller his run of Main
Street, so long as he keeps his lawlessness confined to the saloon and his
revenge limited to the murder of the man who put him behind bars in the first
place. Encouraging Kane to hightail it out of town before the noonday train
arrives does not augment this gesture with magnanimity. In fact, it remains a
rather opportunistic charade; a way to kill two birds with one stone, sparing
the town the indignation of seeing their hero fall while saving face once
Miller has returned; diverting his reprisals to that desert pursuit of his arch
nemesis far away from their town. The
situation is further complicated by Kane’s lingering affections for ‘business woman’, Helen Ramirez (Katie
Jurado) who astutely recognizes Kane’s recent marriage to Amy Fowler (Grace
Kelly), not as a reformation of his predilections repeatedly satisfied in her
boudoir, but rather, as an affirmation of Kane’s good ole boy reemerging,
miraculously untarnished by their time spent together and much better suited to
Amy’s temperament. Nice girls go straight at the altar. But bad girls can go
everywhere whenever they damn well please. Helen recognizes Kane will always be
a man of integrity. Despite his flaws, he can make Amy a good husband. But can
Amy do Kane justice as his wife? Helen respects Kane. In fact, she is probably
the only person to fully empathize with his viewpoint as an outcast – being
one, herself. Helen respects how much Kane is being torn apart by his nagging
conscience. He must flee. To remain behind is certain death. Alas, Kane cannot
abandon his principles any more than he will allow injustice to prevail where
only yesterday he planted the seeds necessary for the integrity of the law to
thrive.
The return of
Frank Miller is hateful to Kane, but bitter still if he chooses escape instead
of confrontation. There is no easy way out. The town will surely suffer; he and
Amy, forever on the run looking over their shoulders. It is this backward slide from the
respectability and security that Kane cannot abide. He will not abandon
Hadleyville even if its citizenry would prefer it. Interestingly, Helen and Amy
form a quiet, if unusual bond; the novice bride and this experienced woman of
the world – partners in support of one man’s salvation. Neither is prepared to ‘like’ the other, and yet, each
discovers something modestly rewarding; Helen, Kane’s past, nobly stepping
aside to allow the girl of his present, to enter freely and without
reservations. What Helen vehemently resents is Amy’s naiveté in not being able
to recognize the insurmountable odds set against the man to whom she has given
her heart but not her gutsy determination.
“What kind of woman are you?” Helen proposes with dark and flashing eyes as
Amy prepares to leave Will on the same inbound train carrying Frank Miller to
town, “How can you leave him like this?
Does the sound of guns frighten you that much?” to which Amy fervently
replies, “I've heard guns before. My
father and my brother were killed by guns. They were on the right side but that
didn't help them any when the shooting started. My brother was nineteen. I
watched him die. That's when I became a Quaker. I don't care who's right or
who's wrong. There's got to be some better way for people to live. Will knows
how I feel about it.”
No one will
take a stand against Miller; not Jonas Henderson (Thomas Mitchell) – a devil’s
advocate of a mayor; nor Judge Percy Mettrick (Otto Kruger), nor even Kane’s
own Deputy Marshal, Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges), who would appreciate Miller’s
complicity to expunge Kane and his galvanized reputation as an impeccable
lawman from the historic record. Harvey fancies himself the heir apparent to
Kane’s mantle of quality, though without Kane’s inherent goodness,
forthrightness or moral compass. He simply likes to wear the tin star. The singular vote for justice is Kane, craggy
and careworn, impeccably crafted by Gary Cooper as a quietly anxious, yet
wholly sincere salt of the earth. Kane cannot conceive of ‘his’ town slipping
back into the godless mire from which his earlier devotions to it brought forth
such prosperity. Yet, Kane is not driven by ego to keep what is his, viewing
progress as a communal effort for the benefit of all. In his soul, Kane has
remained the epitome of the weary idealist, despite every fiber of his virtue
now being tested with Miller’s early release from prison. Even as Kane weighs
his options, Miller’s men are amassing at the depot to exact their revenge with
relish.
High Noon is unequivocally an allegory for one man’s crusade
against villainy. But it also raises a mirror more apropos to the times in
which the picture was made, asking the harder question, of what value is
freedom when those who would desire to reap its benefits are equally as
disinterested to defend its cause from the oppression of genuine tyranny? Over the years, Carl Foreman’s screenplay has
been reinterpreted as everything from a frank deconstruction of one man’s moral
compass adrift in a sea of ambiguous hypocrites, to a scathing indictment of
mid-western American core values. This latter critique was enough to blacklist
Foreman from working in Hollywood under his own name for many years, even after
the McCarthy ‘Red Scare’ and witch hunts had died down. In reality, Foreman’s
adaptation of John W. Cunningham’s The Tin Star is very faithful to its
source. Even more ironic: Cunningham was never branded a communist for his
views. Yet, even before pre-production began, High Noon garnered controversy over its central casting of the
middle-aged Gary Cooper, opposite a very young, Grace Kelly. This was Kelly’s
first major movie role; twenty-two years Coop’s junior, causing the Production
Code to raise a few disparaging eyebrows over their May/December marriage.
Indeed, Coop’ was old enough to be Kelly’s father. The Code also took umbrage
to the inference both the marshal and his deputy had been regular customers of
the town prostitute. Despite these concerns, Foreman’s screenplay would remain
relatively untouched by intervening hands and personal tastes.
To suggest High Noon was made under considerable
acrimony and the heavy weight of many personalized tensions is an
understatement. At the very least, Foreman’s blacklisting after he refused to
name names during the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings in
1947 had established him as a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.
Treated as a hostile witness by the committee, Foreman’s staunchly entrenched
views caused his business associate, producer, Stanley Kramer to demand an
immediate dissolution of their partnership. However, as a signatory to the
production loan, Foreman would remain under contract and continue to work on High Noon, his last major writing
assignment in Hollywood. Kramer would later claim Foreman had threatened to
falsely give his name to the committee, largely out of spite. And while
Zinnemann would downplay Foreman’s involvement on the project, it was later
revealed Foreman had stayed on as part of the creative team well into its
production phase; often sitting off to the side while key scenes were being
shot. High Noon ought to have
starred John Wayne. Indeed, Kramer had wanted Wayne for the plum part. For one
reason or another, Wayne turned the project down; perhaps, wary of Foreman’s
involvement, or simply to distance himself from any film that might hint at the
spank of communist propaganda. After that, the part of Will Kane was shopped
around to Gregory Peck, who declined it, not out of support for HUAC (in fact,
Peck resolutely opposed the blacklist), but rather because he felt it too
similar to the lead he had just played in 1950’s The Gunfighter. Miraculously, the part was still not Gary Cooper’s
for the asking. Only after Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas, Marlon Brando,
Montgomery Clift and Burt Lancaster all said ‘no’ did Cooper’s name get tossed into the mix. Today, it is all
but impossible to imagine anyone but Gary Cooper in the part. Perhaps,
Zinnemann was aware of Cooper’s ailing health – a bleeding ulcer and a bad back
that made Coop’ very reluctant to participate in the stunt fights with the
infinitely more robust and younger, Lloyd Bridges. Nevertheless, when the time
came, Coop’ refused to have his stunts done by a double.
Principle
photography on High Noon began in
late summer 1951, utilizing Iverson’s ‘movie ranch’ in Oakdale California, a
substitute for the Hadleyville depot; also, the Columbia Ranch and Columbia
State Historic Park, where a facsimile of Hadleyville itself was erected out of
plywood. Exteriors of the town church were actually shot at St. Joseph’s in
Tuolumne City, but interiors were a full size set built on a sound stage.
Zinnemann asked cinematographer, Floyd Crosby to give the picture an overall
look of sun-baked desolation – no pretty skies full of white fluffy clouds or
expansive vistas, scarred by blazing sunsets. To achieve this look, Crosby used
no filters to diffuse the natural light and also instructed that all prints
struck from this footage were to be made a few points lighter than normal,
affording the movie exteriors a very bleached-out appearance. For the first time in movie history, the
actual run time and that of the story being told on screen closely paralleled
one another; Zinnemann punctuating the effect by frequently cutting away to a
series of clocks telling the correct time. When the rough cut was assembled for
the studio brass, all concurred something special had been captured out there
in the tumbleweed. High Noon was shaping
up to be a superior western drama and quite possibly, one of the finest movies
of any genre yet made in the United States.
Upon its
release High Noon received high
praise and absolute condemnations from those in the industry as well as film
critics. There was no happy medium. One either loved or despised the results.
As if to reaffirm his own anti-communist slant in support of HUAC, John Wayne
went very public with his adamant declaration High Noon was the worst movie he had ever seen; a sentiment echoed
by director, Howard Hawks who felt so strongly about it he made 1959’s Rio Bravo as something of a rebuttal.
With all due respect to Hawks and the Duke, their opinions may have been more
colored than clearly rendered on a judgement of something else beyond the
movie. And Rio Bravo, despite being
a fine western in its own right, is clearly no High Noon! Noted film critic, Bosley Crowthers famously labeled High Noon ‘a western for people who don’t like westerns’, adding, ‘there is scarcely a false note in the
production or casting’ and citing Zinnemann’s direction as methodically
tense. Indeed, more accolades were to
follow, the public showing its support at the box office and the Academy
bestowing 7 Oscar nominations and four gold statuettes for Best Actor, Film
Editing, Original Song – ‘Do Not Forsake
Me Oh My Darling, and finally, score by noted composer, Dimitri Tiomkin.
Today, removed from all its timely hype, High
Noon endures as a far more progressive western with much to say about the
mediocrities of life and the good that one individual can achieve – alas, to
what purpose when those he seeks to help are unwilling even to help themselves?
In the end, High Noon plays more as
the parable it was conceived to be rather than a subversive euphemism for political
paranoia.
Our story
begins with Marshal Will Kane’s marriage to a lovely Quaker bride, Amy Fowler.
A respected pillar of Hadleyville’s small community, Kane has decided to hang
up his tin star and honor his wife’s Quaker principles by becoming a farmer.
The two will live obscurely, but seemingly blissfully. It’s a lovely fairytale;
the dream deflated as Kane’s departure from Hadleyville is interrupted by news
Frank Miller, the notorious outlaw Kane arrested and sent to prison, has been
exonerated at trial and is heading back into town to meet up with his gang and
avenge his incarceration. Kane is urged by Mayor Jonus Henderson to leave town
immediately. There’s not a moment to spare.
But Kane is reluctant to flee from this place he has worked so tirelessly
to civilize. His former deputy (nee acting Marshal) Harvey Pell is in even more
of a hurry to see Kane go, misperceiving that without Kane’s presence the
people will naturally gravitate their affections over to him for counsel and
protection. But Harvey is a greedy sort. He sees the post of Marshal for what
he can get out of it, not what he can put into it and give back to the
community. Nevertheless, the whole town
council agrees Kane should leave post haste. Kane and Amy are escorted to a
waiting carriage. Alas, as Kane punts the horses with a crack of the whip,
putting considerable distance between themselves and Hadleyville, he begins to
suffer from a crisis of conscience. After all, he has left Hadleyville
vulnerable to Miller’s influence. And simply by leaving town he has not
prevented the maniacal Miller from seeking him out on the open road. It’s no
use. The hunter has become the hunted. Unable to reconcile his former duties as
marshal and the overwhelming sense of loyalty he feels for the town, Kane
bitterly informs Amy they must go back.
Meanwhile,
back in town, Harvey makes a play for the prostitute, Helen Ramirez. Despite
her hard shell, Helen fell in love with Kane a long time ago – a love that has
since refused to die. She sees through Harvey and finds his ambitions rather
shallow. Arriving back in town, Kane
leaves Amy at the same hotel Helen is staying at, instructing her to take a
room until he can settle his business with Frank Miller. But Amy stands her
ground. She tells Kane she intends to leave Hadleyville on the noonday train
and if he isn’t at the depot by then he needn’t bother to follow her later –
that is, if he is not shot dead first by Miller and his gang. Kane reluctantly
leaves Amy behind to begin organizing a posse to defend the town. Kane’s faith in the town is shaken to its
core when he quickly finds abject reluctance, even cowardice prevailing in the
face of danger. It seems the whole town would rather complacently sit back and
allow Miller and his gang back into their fold than fight for justice on their
own terms. Judge Percy Mettrick implores Kane to leave before Miller’s arrival
on the noonday. Meanwhile, Miller’s gang comprised of his brother, Ben (Sheb
Wooley), Jack Colby (Lee Van Cleef) and Jim Pierce (Robert Wilke) has already
begun to assemble at the depot.
This
assignation sobers Kane up. He realizes how foolish he has been in returning to
face Miller alone. Nobody wants bloodshed…but peace at what price? As a last
ditch effort Kane appeals to Harvey to stand beside him. But Harvey reveals his
truer jealousies toward Kane now before ordering him to get out of town. Kane
refuses. The two spar inside an old barn until Kane eventually beats Harvey to
a pulp – reaffirming for Harvey what the town already knows to be true about
him; that he will always remain a pale ghost of the law in Kane’s shadow.
Meanwhile, Amy confronts Helen inside the hotel. Helen is cordial but hardly
polite. The women exchange glances, then words, and finally mixed emotions
about the man they both so obviously love. Helen agrees to take Amy to the
depot to meet the noonday, but chides her for running out on her husband –
something Helen insists she would never do. At the station the women see
Miller’s gang. Fearful she has made a terrible mistake in running away, Amy
waits until the last possible moment; then hurries back into town on foot at
the first sound of gunfire. Will faces down Miller and his men alone. He
manages to shoot Jack and Ben dead, but is wounded in arm. Forsaking her religious
convictions to save her husband, Amy takes up arms and shoots Jim in the back.
Regrettably, Frank Miller comes up from behind and takes Amy hostage. As he
drags her into the middle of town to lure Kane from his hiding spot, Amy
manages to free herself and Kane shoots Miller dead before contemptuously
casting his tin star into the dust and driving away with his bride. There is
nothing left for either of them in Hadleyville now and for the very first time,
Kane realizes it too.
High Noon is an extremely sobering indictment on the failure of
a community to defend itself, not because the odds are too great; rather, due
to its own laziness to uphold virtues it knows to be true and sacred, though
mis-perceived as too difficult to defend. In hindsight, the picture casts a
fairly unflattering allegorical reflection on society at large, so eager, yet
so blind and hungry for the mirage of a virtuous and omnipotent authority to
sweep in and provide a safe haven for all, that in absence of such a myth it is
willing to accept even corruption itself, simply to fill the position with a
warm body. Zinnemann’s movie surmises people do not drink the sand from a
mirage because they are thirsty. They sip it because they lack the ability to
discern it from the life-giving waters. In this penultimate moment of surrender
(Kane casting his tin star into the dust where it belongs) High Noon achieves a sort of fabled distinction no other western
made before or since its time has challenged. The town has cost Kane and Amy
everything. And Gary Cooper’s expression as he silently acknowledges his
contempt for the townsfolk gathered to gawk at the remains of the fallen
sickens Kane. After all, he nearly sacrificed his love and a good woman and for
what? His stubborn morality forced Amy to forsake her Quaker principles. Can
she ever forgive him for being compelled to come to his aid when no one else
would, and thus betray a piece of her own heart and soul, merely to protect
those who have proven wholly unworthy of the effort? In forsaking her devout
religious beliefs, Amy Fowler has forfeited her naive optimism about the world
at large. In some ways, she has suddenly matured to a lighter shade of Helen
Ramirez; the remainder of her fresh-cheeked bloom destined to rub off after the
couple has shared their wedding night.
Yet, despite
its downtrodden finale, few westerns and even fewer films have left the viewer
more remorseful and yet fulfilled and rallying to a cause. We respect Kane’s
decision to remain behind and stand his ground even as we recognize (as he does
in the end) it was the wrong decision. We feel for Kane’s overwhelming sense of
loss, his deflated patriotism and dismantled faith in friendships as tarnished
as his tin star. And we suddenly recognize Kane’s abandonment of the town, as
he has been abandoned by it, as a tale as timeless as mankind itself: the
rugged individualist standing on principles alone for a committee of hypocrites
who lack the initiative. These are sobering revelations that flair up in our
collective consciousness even as Kane departs Hadleyville without a word spoken
to the men and women whom he considered friends only a few hours before, but
now appear to him as less than strangers along the open road to nowhere. Gary
Cooper is the perfect western hero for High
Noon; aged and weather-beaten as the sagebrush, yet staunchly refusing to
bend. How much of Kane’s magnificence can actually be credited to Coop’s acting
style, as opposed to owed the cache of his built-in star power is open for
discussion. Nevertheless, there is greatness in Coop’s performance, a peerless
example of tragic disillusionment.
Like a good
many westerns, High Noon plays off
the traditions and duality of good vs. evil. Unlike most, it is a far subtler
critique of where to draw the line, with alarming tonalities of morally gray
ambiguity frequently intruding. In many ways, Lloyd Bridge’s Harvey, not Frank
Miller, is the real nemesis of the piece: the antithesis of Cooper’s Kane –
egotistical, stocky, self-seeking and lacking in convictions beyond his own
greed. Harvey is attracted to Helen Ramirez; the woman Cooper’s Kane gave up
for Amy. Just as Amy represents the sort of woman Helen would like to have been
(and arguably, once was) Bridges’ Harvey presents a sort of fallen masculinity;
as Helen earlier tries to explain, “It
takes more than broad shoulders to be a man.” But the real evil descending
on Hadleyville is not Miller or his gang, rather, the loss of purpose and
weakened resolve the whole town must share in. There is little about the ending
of High Noon to suggest Hadleyville’s
citizenry will rally together in Kane’s absence, despite being reunited in
their shame under the large-looming shadow of his bravery. Yet, Kane’s heroics
do not stir the town to do better or even reconsider their own moral ambiguity.
Rather, Kane’s absence has left an irresoluble void that cannot – and probably
never will - be filled.
The first of Olive
Media’s ‘Signature Edition’ Blu-rays,
High Noon’s reissue considerably
improves on its previous Blu-ray release. Frankly, it is about time this
company, with so many licensing agreements to distribute a slew of classic
movies, began taking the task seriously. Olive is what I have sincerely
classified in the past as one of the bottom feeders of third-party distribution.
Most of their discs are bare bones and sporting image quality that is in very
rough to middling shape at best. Yet, the initial release of High Noon from them did not look all
that bad. In fact, I was marginally pleased with it back in 2009. So, is this
the same regurgitated transfer with just a few gussied up extras? No! It’s
better in unanticipated ways that only serve to augment one’s viewing
experience. Not only is this reissue the beneficiary of some modest clean-up
that has virtually eradicated all age-related scratches, but what we have here is a brand new 4K scan and restoration; grain structure in particular,
markedly improved; the main titles, less contrasty and minus the few minor
ringing halos/shadows that persisted before; black levels more deeply saturated
and fine detail ever so slightly refined. The image quality throughout is
thoroughly impressive. In short, there is absolutely nothing to complain about
here.
The DTS mono
audio sounds virtually identical to the previous release, which is not a bad
thing, but rather impressively rendered with Dimitri Tiomkin’s sparse score and
Tex Ritter’s lonesome title track exhibiting a nuanced freshness. Perhaps even
more miraculous, Olive has dug in deep to produce some new and revealing
extras: A Ticking Clock – hosted by Mark Goldblatt that discusses the
editing of High Noon; A
Stanley Kramer Production - Michael Schlesinger’s featurette on
Kramer’s role as producer, Imitation of Life: The Blacklist History of
High Noon with historian, Larry Ceplair and blacklisted screenwriter,
Walter Bernstein; Ulcers and Oscars: The Production History of High Noon - a
visual essay with rarely seen archival elements, narrated by Anton Yelchin, and
finally, Uncitizened Kane - an original essay by Sight & Sound editor, Nick James. Esteemed restoration expert,
Robert A. Harris has commented that with this release Olive Media is making
their “move into Criterion territory”.
Personally, I think it a shay premature to hope for as much. A handful of
planned re-releases scheduled to round out 2016 hardly makes up for Olive’s spotty
past track record. But like Mr. Harris, I sincerely hope this Signature Edition
of High Noon is the turning point for
Olive and thoroughly laud their methods, but more importantly, their results. Bottom line: High Noon: The Signature Edition is a blue ribbon Blu-ray winner. We
finally have one of cinema’s rare treasures looking decades younger and
more vital than ever before – and, in a comprehensively assembled package with
goodies to boot. Wow and thank you!
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
5+
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS
5+
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