Fred Zinnemann's "High Noon"

Author(s): Louis Giannetti

Source: Film Criticism, Vol. 1, No. 3 (WINTER 1976-77), pp. 2-12
Published by: Allegheny College
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/44018581
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 Fred Zinnemann's "High Noon"
Louis Giannetti

High Noon (1952) was one of the first of a new breed of westerns that
grew in popularity in the fifties, movies that were variously designated "adult
westerns," "psychological westerns," and--particularly among hostile com-
mentators--" an ti- westerns." Robert Warshow's celebrated essay, "The
Westerner," is largely responsible for the low esteem in which Zinnemann's
film is presently held by many critics.* Warshow was a romantic intellectual
with pronounced anti-intellectual prejudices, and despite the perceptive obser-
vations he makes in this influential essay, it has also caused some mischief.
Warshow's thesis is that the "classic" '(and largely pre-war) western, with its
rigid adherence to mythic character types and conventionalized themes, is super-
ior to those postwar movies that deviate from these conventions. Thus, he sin-
gles out an obscure "B" western called Powder River (directed by Louis King in
1953, and starring Rory Calhoun) as "better in most ways" than John Ford's
near-masterpiece, My Darling Clementine. According to Warshow, King's movie
is superior precisely because it doesn't violate the western form-as though this
form had been handed down directly from God.
Now an argument might be made that Ford's "classic" Stagecoach is super-
ior to High Noon because Ford is the greater visual lyricist, and the
attractiveness of the genre-especially in its pre-war form-is largely dependent
upon its pictorial richness. But Warshow doesn't take this position, though it's
commonly attributed to him. Indeed, he criticizes Stagecoach for its "unhappy
preoccupation with style. "In other words, if only Ford had avoided the tempta-
tion to pump some stylistic life into his conventional characters and rather pre-
dictable situations, he might have produced a better movie!

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 Genre enthusiasts like Warshow tend to be somewhat reactionary. They
are preoccupied with thematic and stylistic similarities among different examples
of the same generic type. In general, such commentators don't lookkindly upon
any significant deviations in form, which they view as effete affectations, corrup-
tions of an implied ideal. Critics who are attracted to the tradition of Social
Realism on the other hand, tend to be "progressive": they find generic conven-
tions childish, tired cliches that "tell" us nothing new. Social Realist critics tend
to be attracted only to westerns which "make a statement"--that is, films which
exploit the form in order to comment on present-day values and attitudes.
This seems to have been the position of producer Stanley Kramer and writer
Carl Foreman in High Noon. Foreman especially believed that the marshal's-,
plight in the story was analogous to that of many Leftist intellectuals in the
period that the movie was made. Zinnemann, on the other hand, has insisted
that the film's meaning is not bound by a narrow contemporaneity: "This was
a picture about a man whose conscience forces him to take a stand, regardless
of consequences. I felt th^t this was not only a contemporary theme, but one
which was truly timeless." We shall say more of the film's contemporary rele-
vance below.
The problems involved with genre conventions are not so simple as
Warshow and his disciples would have us believe. Nor are the attitudes of the
Social Realist critics always relevant in the analysis of genre films. Both types
of critics tend to superimpose external criteria on a given movie: a western is
valued or dismissed not on its own aesthetic terms, but on the basis of how
closely it conforms to some Platonic ideal. Of course every genre film must be
evaluated at least in part in terms of its predecessors in the form. But this rela-
tionship is less crucial with some works than with others. Ford's The Searchers
is essentially a complex psychological study, and its generic conventions are
relatively unimportant. Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country , on the other
hand, acquires its richness because it alludes ironically to the optimistic "vision
of many pre-war "classic" westerns. This same ironic tension can be found
in such works as Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller , and Arthur Penn's
Little Big Man , which even features the Seventh Cavalry, John Ford's favorite
military company.
In contrast to such films, Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West
is a loving homage to its genre predecessors: almost every western convention in
the lexicon is included, and treated in a rapturously operatic style, a style that
Warshow would doubtlessly have condemned had he been alive when the film
was released. In Leone's film, in other words, the style, not the conventions per
se, becomes the movie's raison d'Ptre. Kramer and Foreman might have
intended High Noon as a comment on the America of the 1950s, but for the
most part, this was not what gives the film its artistic distinction. Not that these
contemporary allusions particularly detract from the work: they simply don't
seem as obvious today as they may have when the film was originally released.
Not surprisingly, the traditional elements are what Warshow liked best
in High Noon : the frontier marshal (Gary Cooper) who must uphold his "hon-
or" by confronting a recently-released man whom he has sent to prison and who
has vowed revenge; the "good" woman (Grace Kelly), cultured and pacifistic,
whom the marshal has just married and who doesn't understand why he must

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stay in town and fight; the "fallen" woman (Kathy Jurado), who is the marshal's
ex-mistress and does understand; and the obligatory shoot-out between the hero
and the villains in the town's main street.
What Warshow and his disciples dislike about High Noon is its excessive
realism, its "social drama" and its "anti-populism." Will Kane, the marshal,
assumes that his deputies will be at his side in confronting the killer and his three
henchmen, but when the deputies don't come through, he asks a number of
townspeople for help. For various reasons, they refuse, and he's forced to face
them alone. In the end, only his disapproving Quaker wife comes to his aid
when she impulsively shoots one of the killers as he is about to shoot her
husband. At the conclusion of the film, the disgusted marshal throws his tin star
in the dust and he and his wife leave town for good.
We shall say more about the film's realism below, but for the moment, we
will confine ourselves to Warshow's other objections. The anti-populist charge
can be dismissed by simply asking the question: where is it written that
westerns-even traditional ones-must be "populist"? In fact, many pre-war west-
erns, as far back as Ford's The Outcasts of Poker Flats (1919) portrayed towns-
people as cowardly, hypocritical, and materialistic. Similarly, the citizens in
Stagecoach are smugly sanctimonious in their attitude towards Doc, Dallas,
and the Ringo Kid. Anti-populism was hardly a novelty in High Noon.
In referring to the film as "social drama" Warshow was alluding to the
political context in which the movie was made- to McCarthyism and the fact
that Foreman was blacklisted by the industry, and had appeared before the
hysterically anti-Communist House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Foreman himself suggested that High Noon actually dealt with the paranoia and
fear induced by the witch-hunts of the time: "I used a western backround to
tell the story of a community corrupted by fear, with the implications I hoped
would be obvious to almost everyone who saw the film, at least in America."
This is very well and good, but just as Shakespeare's plays are filled with sly
contemporary allusions which present-day audiences find only peripherally in-
teresting, so too is High Noon of interest to us primarily because it remains
artistically satisfying in its own terms, not because it "makes a comment" on
McCarthyism.
Like Warshow, Howard Hawks disliked High Noon because of its "viola-
tion" of the genre's conventions. Indeed, he claimed that he made Rio Bravo
in rebuttal to Zinnemann's film. Also like Warshow, Hawks believes that the
western hero is not an ordinary man, but a Superhero who can vanquish Evil on
his own. "What did he have to have help for?" Hawks scoffed. "Why didn't he
just go out and shoot?" ^ Judging from his interviews, one would guess that
Hawks is a man of considerably less intellectual subtlety than Zinnemann, but
notwithstanding that probability Rio Bravo is a charming film, in large part be-
cause Hawks is an immensely skilled stylist, and th appeal of his western is pri-
marily due to the panache of its performers.
But this whole issue is mostly trumpery. There is certainly no reason why
one can't admire both Rio Bravo and High Noon. They're two totally different
kinds of westerns, as Zinnemann himself has pointed out: "I'm rather surprised
at this kind of thinking. Sheriffs are people and no two people are alike." In

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two eminehtly sensible sentences, Zinnemann deflates this whole issue and
brings us back to what criticism should concern itself with: not with the reac-
tionary dogmatism that plagues too many genre critics; nor with the preoccupa-
tion with noble sentiments which often afflicts the thinking of Social Realists;
but with the aesthetic characteristics of the work itself. The excellence of a
western can exist in traditional elements or in innovations, or in both. But to
construct extrinsic "rules" about these matters is critical folly.
As the title suggests, High Noon is about the pressures of time. The
amount of time that expires in the movie is identical with the film's literal dura-
tion. The film is profuse in images of clocks,^ and Zinnemann exploits the con-
cept of time as the principle foil to his protagonist:
I visualized the threat as a static piece of film showing nothing but
the railroad tracks running all the way to the horizon. Against it, in
almost perpetual motion the figure of the marshal moving hither and
yon in his search for help which fails to arrive as people abdicate
their conscience for various reasons. Against this, the element of
TIME, as exemplified by the clocks, moving more and more slowly
and becoming larger and larger on the screen until a state of almost
suspended animation is reached, just before the clock strikes the
first bell of noon. To accomplish this we over-cranked the pendu-
lums more and more so movement became almost dream-like in the
end. We also over-cranked the shot of the horses and wagon carrying
the two women to the station, so that it almost floated by the
marshal who was standing still, watching them disappear into the dis-
tance. The resolution of the sequence was a a big close-up of the
marshal with the camera on a boom receding into an enormous high
long shot showing the entire village, empty of life, holding its breath,
all windows and doors closed, not a soul, not even dogs to be seen,
waiting for the impending gunfight. I discussed this concept with
Merill White, the editor who worked on the film before Elmo
Williams, and with Elmo himself. 6
To all intents and purposes, the film also preserves the unity of place, for vir-
tually all the action occurs within the narrow confines of Hadleyville. Originally
the script featured many scenes which took place outside of town, but these
were altered during the shooting.
As in a tragedy by Racine, what we witness in High Noon is a compression
of events which represents a distillation of attitudes that have been building up
long before the formal opening of the film. We see only the final stages of
the drama, precipitated by a series of temporal coincidences. This compression
gives the movie a sense of urgency that is established almost at once, when we
observe that it is 10:40 a.m. The tension isn't resolved until the climactic con-
frontation at the end of the film, when Will Kane must face his Destiny in the
avenging form of Frank Miller, who will arrive in town on the noonday train.
The structure of the film is as tight as a precision watchpiece. Foreman's
script concentrates exclusively on characters and events and avoids any tempta-
tion to moralize. The dialogue is lean and unembellished. What we see is a
human destiny unfolding on the screen, and the situation speaks for itself.

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 There's no need-or place-for extraneous authorial commentary. The
film's relentlessness is reinforced by the sens of inevitability in the sequence of
events. Indeed, there is a suggestion of ritual in the film-implied also by the
title-in which we become witnesses to an inexorable rite. Like a sacrificai
victim, Will Kane is trapped in the streets of Hadley ville, a reluctant ca
for heroism. Kane is as naive as he is civilized: he doesn't see the need for
heroism in a civilized society.
As Warshow points out, the traditional western hero must stay and figh
because it's "the thing to do." That is, the gentleman-hero must uphold his
"honor." In High Noon , the psychology is more complex, and more realistic.
On this particular day, Will is marrying a steadfast Quaker, and he has promised
her that after the wedding he will lay aside his guns and quit his job. He is a
civilian and under no moral or legal obligation to stay, as many of the towns-
people remind him when they first learn of Miller's intention to return. Will is a
"free man," and indeed, the only time in the movie that Zinnemann uses open
forms-sweeping pans, long shots, loose framing-is near the beginning of the film
when Will and his bride Amy are hurried into a buggy by the wedding guests. As
the buckboard careens out of town, the hero's face is a study in confusion,
anxiety, and panic. But before they can get very far he stops. Like many of
Zinnemann's protagonists, he realizes that flight is at best a temporary expe-
dient. He must go back and confront Miller. When Amy protests, his arguments
are eminently practical: out in the open spaces they will make sitting targets for
the revenge-crazed Miller. Will knows that Miller will never rest until he tracks
them down. Furthermore, in town Will can count on the help of his deputies
and the citizens to combat Miller's drunken henchmen. Since the new marshal
won't arrive in town until the next day, Will feels that it's his responsibility, t
go back and protect his friends.
High Noon, like most of Zinnemann's mature films, might be entitled
Man's Fate : the protagonist has no choice but to show us what he's made o
Will resembles Zinnemann's other protagonists in that he's drawn to confine-
ment, or at least part of him is. Openness and "freedom" aren't always-or eve
usually-posited as attractive alternatives in Zinnemann's universe. Will is also
typical Zinnemann protagonist in that he genuinely wishes to be part of a larg
community, but is unable to pay the price of admission- a bending of person
principles. This same dilemma confronts the protagonists of From Here t
Eternity , The Nun's Story , The Sundowners , and A Man For All Season
The , complexity of Will's temperament can be seen in his relationships with
the two women in the film. His chosen bride is not the tolerant, sensual, and
intelligent Helen Ramirez, but the rather repressive and demanding Amy Fow
ler. In all fairness to the character, however, and to Grace Kelly's sympatheti
performance, Amy is never portrayed as a prig. She has lost a father and brothe
through violence, and hence her aversion to bloodshed is not based upon mere
abstract principle. "If you think I like this you're crazy," Will replies when Am
accuses him of enjoying violence. And he doesn't like it. He does what he
"got to do" not because of some schoolboy's notion of honor (though self
respect is not excluded as one of his motivations) but because going back
town is the most sensible way of attacking the problem* There is safety
numbers- or so he believes. After all, Hadleyville is his arena, for he s the town
hero But then, one by one, beginning with Amy herself, his allies desert him
and he's more alone in Hadleyville than he ever could have imagined possible.

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 If all of the citizens of the town refused to help Will for the same cow-
ardly reason, the movie would be pretty conventional. But depending on the
character of the individuals involved, the reasons vary, and some of them are
surprisingly convincing. Like The Men , High Noon contains a rich gallery of
secondary characters, who respond in unique ways. Judge Mettrich (Otto
Kruger), who sentenced Miller to prison, is clearing out of the territory to save
his skin, and he advises Will to do the same. The motivation of his deputy
Harvey (Lloyd Bridges) is more complex. Presently the lover of Will's ex-
mistress Helen (she was Miller's mistress before that), Harvey resents the fact
that he wasn't made marshal upon Will's retirement. Furthermore, Harvey sus-
pects that the sheriff might have been partly responsible for his failure to be
promoted. A courageous but immature young man, Harvey has an ambivalent
attitude towards Will: he has a certain filial admiration for the marshal who in
turn is paternalistically benevolent towards the youth. But at the same time,
Harvey resents the older man and is jealous of his prestige, hence his attempts to
supplant Will both as a lover and a lawman.
There are also a number of townspeople who look forward to the show-
down with unfeigned sadistic glee. The insolent hotel clerk, for example,
believes that when Will cleaned up the town, in effect he shut it down, and
the hotel subsequently lost much it its business. The men in the saloon are also
eager to see Will gunned down. Indeed, one of the saloon regulars even goads
him into a fist fight when the marshal overhears him laying bets on the outcome
of the shoot-out. Not everyone in Hadleyville is grateful to Will, though it takes
the present crisis to bring out just how much resentment he created over the
years.
Will goes to see his long-time idol, Howe (Lon Chaney Jr.), an old-time
lawman now living in retirement. The younger man goes more for moral support
than actual assistance, but he's not given much encouragement by the weary old
gunfighter. "It's all for nothing," the old man tells him. A sheriff is expected to
subject himself to constant danger, and in the end there's never any gratitude or
even respect. All that's left is a tin star, poverty, and old age. Much sobered,
Will leaves the house of his hero in dismay and confusion. This advice was not
given by a coward like the Judge, an opportunist like Harvey, or a rabblerouser
like the saloon fly, but by a man who has been through it all himself, by aman
who loves him.
The portrait of the community is not unrelievedly bleak. In the early
stages of the crisis, a rancher named Baker volunteers his services, and he speaks
with sincerity of how the townspeople will always be grateful to Will for what he
did for them in years past. A one-eyed drunk also volunteers, but Will merely
humors him and gives him a dollar. The poor wretch immediately repairs to the
saloon, where he can drink up more courage. A fourteen-year old boy is the
third volunteer. Will is touched by the youth's bravery and sense of shame for
his elders, but of course the marshal sends the boy home. When Baker returns
later he's astonished that no one else has volunteered. Frightened and ashamed,
he backs out of his commitment, claiming his responsibilities as father and
husband take first priority. Once again, Will is alone. Once again, he must go out
and seek help.
While Will's precious minutes are being squandered away, Miller's drunken
cronies wait at the forlorn railroad station with increasing impatience. Through-
out various episodes, Zinnemann keeps cutting back to this scene and especially
to a shot of the train tracks stretching into infinity: a constant visual reminder
of the inescapability of Miller's revenge. Throughout the movie we can

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see how many minutes Will has remaining while he tries to round up deputies.
There is also a considerable amount of cross-cutting between Amy and Helen, in
which Zinnemann explores the similarities and contrasts between these two
strong-willed women.
Near the end of the movie, Will Kane walks up to the church, where his
entrance interrupts the service. The preacher is hostile and cold: Will has never
joined the church, and was not even married in a religious ceremony. But the
clergyman's more decent impulses get the better of him, and he allows Will to
ask the congregation for help. Some of the men impetuously volunteer, recal-
ling, like Baker, that it was Will who made the town a safe, thriving community.
But soon dissenting voices are heard. A man named Cooper refuses to help,
claiming that the whole quarrel is just a personal feud-an allusion apparently to
the fact that Helen was mistress to both Miller and Kane. Another man com-
plains that he pays taxes to have law and order preserved, and he doesn't under-
stand why ordinary citizens must risk their lives to come to the sheriff's rescue.
The debate drags on cruelly, while time continues to run out. Finally the
congregation agrees to abide by the advice of Jonas Henderson (Thomas Mit-
chell), a pillar of the community and a personal friend of Will's. Henderson
delivers a long-and sincere-oration on the gratitude that the community feels
towards Will. But then he speaks of the dangers involved in allowing a show-
down to occur in Hadleyville. Investments in the business community will
dwindle if the town gets a "wide-open" reputation. As much as he admires the
marshal, Henderson wishes that Will had never returned. He advises him to leave
now, while there is still some little time. Visibly shaken, and with absolutely no
one else to turn to, Will stumbles out of the church into the blazing glare of the
noonday sun.
The marshal's last remaining minutes are spent in ways that must have
shocked contemporary audiences. He goes to the stable and once again seriously
contemplates leaving town. Added to this unheroic but very human temptation,
Will admits to being scared. In Foreman's original script, the sheriff even con-
templates suicide, but Zinnemann cut this. ? Despite his fear and forebodings,
Will decides to stay and fight: he's tired of being shoved around. When he goes
to the barbershop to wash up, he hears a new coffin being constructed in the
back room, and even manages to crack a grim joke at his own expense. When he
returns to his office, he sits down and writes his last will and testament. These
realistic touches were precisely what outraged such "purists" as Warshow and
Hawks: everyone knows that the western hero fights and damns the conse-
quences. The protagonist of High Noon is painfully, embarassedly, human. He
has doubts about himself-just like us.
Shoot-outs in conventional westerns are usually ritualized and romanti-
cized. Perhaps the ultimate in this kind of stylization is found in Leone's Once
Upon a Time in the West , in which the shoot-out is virtually choreographed.
Ford's westerns generally avoid violence. Indeed, in some films, his heart just
doesn't seem to be in it, like My Darling Clementine , in which he refuses to
dramatize the gunfight between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Often Ford
executes his scenes of violence and killing with hasty dispatch, as though these
obligatory scenes were the necessary price that has to be paid for all the lovely
lyricism that usually dominates his westerns. In Stagecoach , for example, John
Wayne dispatches three killers with computer-like efficiency, and with only
three bullets. The scene is over in a matter of seconds, and Ford doesn't even
bother to show us the actual killings, but cuts away after the hero fires his rifle.
Zinnemann's shoot-out is far more realistic, and is stretched to its maxi-
mum limits in terms of suspense. The sequence begins rather ritualistic ally, with

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the implacable Miller and his three lieutenants preparing to walk down the main
street, and the marshal ' at the other end of the street walking towards the
railroad station. But Will Kane is no superman, who can dispatch four killers
with four bullets. Will must use cunning and stealth to survive, and accordingly,
we see him sneaking down alleyways and behind buildings, where he manages to
pick off one of the killers.
There is a great deal of firing, missing, and reloading during the ensuing
violence. A horse is wounded in the nearby stable. The stable catches fire, and
the frenzied horses stampede out into the street. In all the confusion, Will is
able to kill another henchman. Terrified, Amy runs to the scene of the violence,
and when she sees the third killer drawing a bead on her husband, she snatches
one of the guns in Will's office and instinctively shoots. Miller crashes into the
office and uses her as a shield, calling on Will to give up. But Amy claws at his
face and pulls away, at which time both men fire their guns. Miller falls to the
ground lifeless, and Will is wounded. Hie two lovers cling to each other, totally
exhausted. Suddenly people stream out of the buildings into the street, newly
impressed with the courage of their marshal. Silently, contemptuously, Will
drops his badge in the dust. The ex-sheriff and his wife then leave town in the
buckboard, without fanfare or flourish, without looking back.
The public, the motion picture industry, and the reviewers all responded
with enthusiasm to High Noon when it was first released. The film won three
Academy Awards: Best Actor for Gary Cooper, Best Score for Dimitri Tiomkin,
and Best Editing for Elmo Williams. In the same year Zinnemann was voted
"Outstanding Director" in a film critic's poll. Several reviewers coupled the
movie with Stagecoach as one of the classics of the western form. Only later did
a number of critics dismiss the film as overrated. No doubt the initial reaction
to the movie was somewhat in excess of its actual merits, but the reaction (in
every sense of that term) was even more out of proportion.
The film's startling realism-now a commonplace in even routine west-
erns-is what most impressed audiences. Even today Zinnemann 's extraordinary
sensitivity in bringing out realistic details is what makes the movie an excep-
tional achievement. We aren't automatically sure that the protagonist will
triumph: too many of the usual assurances have been eliminated. After Will's
fist fight, we see his bruised and bloodied hands as he soothes them in a pan of
water. Likewise, Zinnemann 's hero sweats profusely under the merciless glare of
the sun. He gets dirtier, more stooped and tired as the action progresses. After
the shoot-out he gasps for breath and is hardly able to speak. In these and other
realistic details we are far removed from the platitudes of the "mythical" West.
Though the movie does contain some conventionalized elements, there is
also much that's observed with freshness. The character of Helen, for example, is
exceptionally sympathetic for a "fallen woman." She is not "punished" or
ridiculed for her sexual worldliness, but treated as an intelligent businesswoman
who has been able to outwit the bigots of the community. Realizing that an
independent, unmarried female of Mexican descent would not be permitted to
flaunt her financial success in a rigid community like Hadley ville, she employs a
prominent pillar-of-the-community type to act as her frontman in her business
enterprises. This necessary hypocrisy disgusts her, but she's shrewd enough to
know it's the most effective way of dealing with the "respectable" citizens of
the town.
The characterization of the townspeople is also surprisingly objective, both
in the writing and in the direction. Cowardice and self-interest aren't portrayed
melodramatically, but as cold facts of life. Several of the people who refuse to
help Will are performed sympathetically, and Zinnemann treats these characters

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with some considerable respect. There's more than one way of looking at a
problem, and those who are not with the hero aren't necessarily "agin"' him
either. This moral ambiguity was almost unheard of in westerns at the time the
film was made.
Of all his movies, High Noon is the only one that the director believes
came out well from beginning to end. Characteristically, Zinnemann refuses to
take full credit for this success, insisting that his collaborators were creative
participants. Tiomkin's "High Noon Ballad," reprised with increasing solemnity
and urgency by Tex Ritter to a stark musical accompaniment, underlies the
growing desperation of the hero's entrapment. The use of the music was Kra-
mer's idea, and was added after the shooting was completed. Zinnemann feels
that the ballad gives the film a mythical quality, and a sense of inexorability
which no one had anticipated while the shooting was in progress.
Floyd Crosby's documentary -like cinematography was worked out in
advance with Zinnemann, who wanted the movie to look like a contemporary
ne ws reel." They wanted to avoid the soft romantic cinematography popularized
by Stagecoach and the glamorous lyrical West typified by such artists as Frederic
Remington, whose paintings influenced the visual style of several of Ford's
westerns. Instead, Zinnemann and Crosby consciously modeled their visual
style on the photographs of Matthew Brady. Accordingly, they used no filters in
the film, and employed a flat lighting style which emphasizes the gritty, barren,
burned-out look of the 19th century photographs of the real American frontier.
Cooper's Academy Award as Best Actor was viewed as something of a joke
by some critics, for though no one denied his splendid photogeneity, not even
his staunchest admirers would think to champion his histrionic abilities. Doubt-
less the award was given as a sentimental gesture to an industry favorite. None-
theless, there is not a false note in his performance as Will Kane, largely due to
Zinnemann 's intelligent handling of his star. "Cooper is first of all a tremendous
personality," Zinnemann has observed. "He is best when he doesn't act. His
just being on the screen exerts something that is very powerful. He doesn't need
to act. The more he is himself, the better and more impressive/' 8 Warshow
suggests that Cooper's long association with the western genre conferred upon
the actor a kind of automatic iconographie al significance, like John Wayne in the
westerns of Ford:
In High Noon we find Gary Cooper still the upholder of or-
der that he was in The Virginian , but twenty-four years older,
stooped, slower moving, awkward, his face lined, the flesh sagging,
a less beautiful and weaker figure, but with the suggestion of greater
depth that belongs almost automatically to age. (p. 148)
Throughout the film, Zinnemann includes many closeups of Cooper's
haggard features, and in a sense, these "psychological landscapes" replace the
open vistas of terrain that are found in conventional westerns. The conflict, in
short, is just as much on Cooper's face as in the streets of Hadleyville.
Richard Griffith suggested that a central problem of screen realism is
whether it is better to project dramatic feeling through the use of trained actors
or to use nonprofessionals, "types from the street," who are used not so much as
players but as "camera subjects," that is, who are exploited primarily for their
Dhotogenic qualities. Zinnemann solves this problem by using professionals but
treating them as far as possible as if they were camera subjects, according to
Griffith. Perhaps at the time that he was writing (1958), Griffith was essentially
correct, and certainly his generalization is true concerning the way
that Zinnemann used Cooper in High Noon. But in his subsequent movies, this
was not always the case, as Zinnemann has pointed out:

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 Casting varies entirely, it depends on what kind of picture
you are doing, and there is no "method" to it. Sometimes you
work on a story and you think about the character but you can't
find the right actor, then you happen to go to a play and you see
a magnificent actor or actress and you suddenly feel that he is
exactly who you want. Other times you see someone playing the
sort of part in a movie that is totally disconnected with the char-
acter that you have, but you feel that there is a facet that might
be interesting and sometimes you take people like that. But there is
no rule or regulation. Very often I've taken people who are totally
unknown or sometimes people who are not even actors, providing
they were outgoing enough to be able to play themselves on the
screen without being inhibited. 9
Zinnemann's direction in High Noon is almost Jansenist in its austerity and
total control. We are always aware of the urgency of the situation, and not a
single scene slackens the tension. The tone is matter-of-factly unromantic.
There are no sweeping majestic vistas of open spaces and breathtaking natural
monuments, but dusty lacklustre buildings and white textureless skies. The
film's unsentimental tone is softened somewhat only by the repetition of the
ballad, with its lyrics emphasizing the hero's fear that his bride will forsake him
in his moment of greatest need. As the movie progresses, the song's sound
texture becomes more remote, and by the conclusion of the film, the ballad is
recorded with a deliberate echo, aurally reinforcing the protagonist's isolation
and abandonment.
Stylistically, the film is totally consistent with Zinnemann's oeuvre , and
considerably at variance with the style of most westerns. There are many
interior scenes, and the mise-en-scene is in closed form, often with ceilings
sealing off the top of the frame, and the lateral edges of the frame herding the
characters into confined areas. Even the exteriors are in closed form. There is
very little sense of openness in the town, and rather than pan, dolly, or crane
horizontally, Zinnemann usually has his characters move in and out of the depth
of the deep-focus images, thus visually reinforcing his theme of entrapment.
Closeups of the protagonist abound emphasizing his increasing estrangement
and separation from the community. The townspeople are generally photo-
graphed in groups, in tightly- framed medium-long shots. The camera work is
seldom spontaneous or lyrical, as in most westerns. Indeed, Zinnemann uses
many anticipatory setups, suggesting fatality, for the camera seems to be "wait-
ing" for the protagonist to enter a predetermined visual design. Even the fist
fights are tightly framed and photographed mostly in medium shots: the fighters
seem to be in constant danger of spilling over into the oblivion of the off-
screen darkness
Like most of Zinnemann's films, High Noon is profuse in images of doors
and windows, a motif of isolation and fragmentation. At the beginning of the
movie, for example, we see Will and Amy not out in the open of the main street,
but through the front windows of various stores and business establishments in
Hadleyville Each window is, in effect, a separate cubicle of existence. One of
the most effective sequences in the movie is the arrival of the train. Will has
exhausted every possibility of enlisting help, and the title ballad throbs on the
soundtrack with increasing volume as the climactic moment draws close. Sud-
denly the song is halted by the piercing shriek of a train whistle. This is fol-
lowed by a series of quick cuts, in which we see the various locales and char-
acters of the earlier portions of the film. Will realizes that his moment of
truth has arrived We then see a series of shots of shutters, doors, and windows

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being closed all over town. His illusions of community solidarity totally shat-
tered, Will Kane, like most of Zinnemann's protagonists, must confront his
destiny alone.

FOOTNOTES:

*"The Westerner" was originally published in 1954, and is included in

Warshow's The Immediate Experience (New York: Atheneum, 1970), pp.
134-54.

^Letter to the author (March 24, 1976). Hereafter referred to as "Let-

ter."

q
Quoted in The Filmviewer's Handbook , by Emile G. McAnany, S.J.
and Robert Willians, S.J. (Glen Rock, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1965), p. 100.

4 Quoted in "Gunplay and Horses," Films and Filming (October 1968),

p. 25.

5
According to Kramer, the concept of preserving the unity of time was
in Foreman's script from the beginning, and the idea of cutting to clocks
throughout the film to heighten the suspense was suggested by the editor, El-
mo Williams. See "Stanley Kramer," Dialogue on Film (July 1973), published
by the American Film Institute, p. 21. But Zinnemann has explained to me
that the idea of the clocks was part of his original concept even before the
shooting began, and before Williams took over the editing.

6"Letter."
H

Foreman's unaltered script is included in Film Scripts Two , edited

by George P. Garrett, O.B.Hardison, Jr., and Jane R. Gelfman (New York:
Appleton Century Crofts and Irvington Publishers, 1971).

^Fred Zinnemann, "A Conflict of Conscience," Films and Filming

(December, 1959), p. 34.

9" Revelations," in Films and Filming (September 1964), p. 6.

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