One against all - this western shows all of America's soul

The marshal of the small town of Hadleyville hardly has time to find comrades-in-arms: Will Kane wants to confront the killer Frank Miller, who will arrive in town on the noon train.

One against all - this western shows all of America's soul

The marshal of the small town of Hadleyville hardly has time to find comrades-in-arms: Will Kane wants to confront the killer Frank Miller, who will arrive in town on the noon train.

Kane once put Miller in prison, but the criminal has been pardoned and everyone knows he is out for revenge; It doesn't make the Marshal any better that three of Miller's accomplices are already hanging around town.

Kane now has an hour to gather men around him, but he can't find them in the church, in the saloon, or at the mayor's. His deputy wouldn't go along unless he became sheriff himself. An old drunk and a 14-year-old boy are loyal to him, but of course Kane doesn't have them to fall back on. He's all on his own.

If there is one belief that holds America together at its core, it is in the individual. To have made this belief vivid in a film, that is the achievement of the western "High Noon". Decades after its premiere on July 24, 1952, the film, whose German title is "High Noon", is therefore one of the best works of the genre. Its dynamic also results from the fact that the narrated time of the film corresponds to real time, at least approximately: the film starts at 10:35 and ends at 12:15.

At the beginning, Kane - played by Gary Cooper - marries the Quaker Amy (Grace Kelly). She is committed to non-violence, in part because her brother and father were victims of a violent crime. The marshal actually wants to leave with her on the same day, but his successor will not arrive until the next day. He's never run away from anyone, says Kane, returning to face the fight while Amy waits for the train.

Fred Zinnemann, a director of Austrian descent, shot the film in just a few weeks in September and October 1951, for what was then a rather meager budget of $800,000. He was lucky with the cast: Cooper played the marshal for a fee well below his usual, and Zinnemann discovered the only 21-year-old Grace Kelly for her first important leading role. Kelly rose to stardom under Alfred Hitchcock in the 1950s before marrying Prince Rainier of Monaco and becoming Grace.

Cameraman Floyd Crosby was also a stroke of luck, who photographed the black-and-white film against the conventions of the genre at the time: The cameramen of the 1950s mostly photographed the dark sky – through red filters – but the scenery in “High Noon” is merciless glistening dipped. This, too, can be interpreted as a parable: Screenwriter Carl Foreman belonged to the Communist Party of the USA in the 1930s, was summoned before Senator McCarthy's "Committee on Un-American Activities" and refused to testify in September 1951.

Director Zinnemann stood by him, as did the conservative Cooper. But in 1953 Foreman went into exile in Britain. So you can also read his screenplay as an allegory of the persecution of communists in the McCarthy era - and of the silent majority that supported this system. Grace Kelly's part was also unusual for the time: the character of Amy in "High Noon" is only a supporting role, but one that is growing.

She's visiting Kane's former girlfriend, Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado), and she'll intervene in the unequal fight that Sheriff Kane isn't waging in the overt shootout spirit we see in other westerns. Amy shoots one of the bandits from behind as he loads his revolver. And when Miller takes her hostage, she grabs his eyes for Kane to shoot him.

In the end, Kane throws his star in the dust and drives off in the carriage with Amy to the tune of the Dimitri Tiomkin-composed song "Don't Forsake Me" - the film's musical leitmotif. Marshal Kane had barely escaped the bandits' bullets, in between he was on the ground - but he got up again and defeated the gangsters.

Tiomkin got an Oscar for it and Gary Cooper one for best actor. Incidentally, it was accepted by John Wayne at the ceremony in 1952 - the man who, as president of the anti-communist "Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals", was largely responsible for the hate speech against Foreman. To this day, Americans still regard him as a symbol of an individual who can deal with himself and the problems of the world on his own.

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