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Peter Wild explains why High Noon is one of the greatest westerns of all time.

Loved and loathed in almost equal measure on its first release in 1952 (John Wayne felt, as many did, that the film was ‘unpatriotic’, and a thinly veiled allegory of the McCarthy Communist witch-hunts), High Noon is these days quite rightly regarded as one of the greatest westerns of all time. Long before Jack Bauer strapped on his Sig and faced off the real-time baddies in multiple seasons of 24, Gary Cooper set the precedent for all-kinds of heroic action with his performance as Sheriff Will Kane who, on the morning of his wedding (to a young Grace Kelly, debuting in the film), discovers that Frank Miller, a no-good-killer he put away five years earlier, is due back into town on the noon train – where, together with his buddies, he’s set to enact a ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’-style retribution on the town. Tightly paced, superbly plotted, High Noon is a timeless treat, remade in a variety of styles and locations countless times (from Peter Hyams’ Outland to the pool hall classic, The Baltimore Bullet) but never yet bettered.

 

Peter Wild on 7th October 2008
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