John Wayne hated High Noon. Howard Hawks, too. The really tough guys
probably can not help but hate High Noon. It's not so much that it is
a woman who stands as the marshal only to the side. Also on the shot
in the back, with which it strikes down the wicked one, you can
ignore. The outrageous and abhorrent from the perspective of John
Wayne is the hero himself director Fred Zinnemann was no upstanding
lawman who do, in the certainty of the right thing, even when alone
confronts a gang of criminals. Zinnemann was looking for a hero who is
not shining, invulnerable superman, but an ordinary man, one who does
something, not because he fucking have to do sometimes simply, without
having to think about right and wrong must but because it requires his
moral conscience of him. He was a hero, whose self-doubts grow
stronger by the minute, at the same rate, he must recognize that the
citizens of his town in the face of imminent danger to cowards and
traitors. And with every failed attempt to get help, is clear that
this place is not worthy to be saved.
Shortly before the place was still hailed him: On his last working
day marry his fiancee Amy Kane, congratulating him and the whole city.
Until the message arrives, that was Frank Miller, brought the marshal
once behind bars, and pardoned on his way to Hadleyville is to take
revenge. Three gunmen from his gang have already arrived to take him
to the 12 clock-train in reception. "People in the North are
interested in this city want to put in money for businesses and
factories. [...] When they read of murder and manslaughter, what will
they think? They will think that this city is open for the crime. And
everything that we work with is wiped out in one fell swoop, the city
will be thrown back by five years. "So the mayor argued in his attempt
to convince Kane to flee. And then the legitimate citizens of their
refusal to help the Marshal. Captured 50 minutes running through Gary
Cooper as Kane Hadleyville and is seeking support in the fight against
the oncoming gangsters, but finds only cowardice behind closed doors.
The town marshal decides against her because she is aware of his
vulnerability. Morality is undermined by fear and spinelessness.
Zinnemann and his screenwriter Carl Foreman agreed that should
represent only High Noon in outer shape of a Western to tell the
universal story beneath the surface of a city that has become corrupt,
out of fear. The subject matter of a corrupt society, the opposite is
the hero-making as equally helpless, was by no means new, but had the
evil laugh in the end never to date a lot when someone like John Wayne
wore the Marshals star. That Kane was not even in the Church finds
support and finally to the desk set to make his will, however, was
newly formed and the enrichment of a genre that had fizzled in the
early 1950s as far as possible.
Arthaus High Noon has now released a new Premium Edition on two DVDs.
Much new is compared with the first edition, but not required: The
bonus material is essentially the same, which is also on the
single-disc in 1999, including a roughly 30-minute (abbreviated)
documentary about Fred Zinnemann from the 1980s. The only notable new
feature is a 50 minute documentary about Gary Cooper, but that was not
manufactured specifically for this DVD edition, but also more than ten
years old. For a premium edition in this compilation is therefore
somewhat meager.
Gary Cooper, who died in 1961 from cancer, was at the time of the
shooting had not a healthy man anymore. He suffered from a stomach
ulcer, he was plagued by his arthritis, he had an affair with a
younger woman and accordingly trouble with his wife. The tormented
expression in Cooper's aging face, and his slow gait, with which he
walks through the empty city, are not only products of his play -
Cooper's Marshal Kane looks more tired than believable hero, not
because man Cooper was less tired. In the course of the film he is
getting stronger in the vicinity of the broken, disillusioned hero of
film noir, from the High Noon has actually more than a classic
Western. Marshal Kane is no longer able to decide their own lives.
Even if they all want him to leave the city, so he knows that running
away does not make sense, because the gangster look and find him,
Miller is, wherever he is hiding. The fatality of events determined
henceforth his actions. The knowledge of the inevitable forces him to
stay.
In an early draft of the script itself Kane holds a gun to your head
and thinking about an end to the thing itself. It would be the only
remaining way to steer its own destiny. So far could not or would not
go but then Zinnemann yet. He leaves Kane alone compete for the final
duel against Miller and win with the help of his wife. And yet it is a
deeply bitter end. When Kane and Amy finally in the arms keep the
Miller dead at her feet, remains for the people left Hadleyville only
disgust. Kane retains his self-respect, but he is a hero without a
home, the beginning of the film was still in the midst of society and
is now excluded from it. The heroic attitude, has always been part and
condition of the Western, is turned into its opposite.
His dislike of High Noon in words sum up, called him John Wayne once
"the most un-American thing I've ever seen in my whole life." One may
regard it as a compliment.
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