High Noon (1952)

The beauty of High Noon is that its themes are universal. On the surface it may be a western, but its themes of conscience, fearlessness and a sense of what is right and of duty, not just to the law, a cause, or even to others, but to yourself and how you wish to live and be perceived, transcends the trappings of the genre to connect with audiences who perhaps would never consider themselves as horse opera aficionados. That High Noon has been uprooted from its old west setting to be effectively been remade or paid homage to time and again in everything from sci-fi actioner Outland (1981) to a 2010 episode of the Jimmy McGovern Manchester-set drama The Street, starring Bob Hoskins, serves as a testimony to the strength and continuing relevance of the film's human story of a man who feels compelled to fight rather than run.

The film's screenwriter Carl Foreman intended High Noon to be an allegory of the McCarthy witch hunts that plagued Hollywood and destroyed the lives and careers of many involved in the business at that time. The House Un-American Activities Committee sought to investigate 'Communist propaganda and influence' in the film industry and declared Foreman, a former Communist Party member who declined to identify any of his colleagues and contemporaries of being fellow members, to be an 'unreliable witness'. He was subsequently blacklisted and moved to the UK. 

However, when you add Fred Zinnemann to the mix as the film director, you get a further resonance to the metaphorical aspect of High Noon and one that supports the theory that the film is a film that just so happens to be set in the west, rather than being a western. As Zinnemann said; "High Noon is not a Western, as far as I'm concerned; it just happens to be set in the Old West". His shooting style certainly supports this too - out goes the traditional landscapes and painterly panoramas of John Ford, in favour of tight close-ups and crisp newsreel style footage in keeping with the social realist approach the director worked in, which reaches its zenith here with the real time setting that makes the tense atmosphere really palpable. 

The critic Stephen Price believes that the Polish-born Zinnemann progressed the anti-McCarthy allegory by allying himself to the core values of Gary Cooper's character, seeing what he represented as being the physical embodiment of his greatest wish for all his films to be about "trying to preserve our civilisation". Price argues that it is easy to see the outlaws arriving to wreak terror and revenge upon the town as a threat to their way of life akin to the fascism of the Nazis who killed Zinnemann's parents in the Holocaust in the previous decade.

Such resonance has run throughout the intervening years and rightly continues to do so to this day, as Zinnemann himself said in his autobiography "In the end, he must meet his chosen fate all by himself, his town's doors and windows firmly locked against him. It is a story that still happens everywhere, every day" This was certainly proved in 1989 when the then 22-year-old Polish graphic designer Tomasz Sarnecki adapted the original Polish language poster for the film by Marian Stachurski as part of the campaign for Solidarity in the first partially free elections in Communist Poland. Referring to his very own High Noon on 4th June, 1989 Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa discussed the metaphor the film presents and its relevance to his politics; "Cowboys in Western clothes had become a powerful symbol for Poles. Cowboys fight for justice, fight against evil, and fight for freedom, both physical and spiritual" Call me an idealistic Corbynista (which I am) if you will, but Labour wouldn't go far wrong if they adopted it for their campaign now - like Gary Cooper, Corbyn seems to stand alone, shunned by a soft and self serving, blissfully and blithely ignorant society but compelled to do what is right for them nonetheless, as an encroaching dangerously fascistic menace appears over the horizon.

Rightly regarded as a classic film, not just a classic western, HUAC poster boy John Wayne hated it, calling it "the most un-American thing I've ever seen in my whole life" and went off to make Rio Bravo with Howard Hawks (who also detested High Noon, disparagingly believing that no good Marshall should "run around town like a chicken with his head cut off asking everyone to help", only to be saved by his 'Quaker wife' in the final reel) as a direct result. And if the likes of John Wayne hating High Noon and believing it to be unpatriotic doesn't immediately make High Noon a five star film then I don't know what does.

RIP Maureen O'Hara

There isn't much of old Hollywood left these days and we've lost another star this weekend; Maureen O'Hara, the flame haired Irish born actress who starred opposite John Wayne in five movies including The Quiet Man (pictured below) and McLintock!, has died at the grand old age of 95.

The evergreen screen persona of O'Hara was that of a strong willed, beautiful tomboy from 'the old country'. It wasn't far from the truth; one of six children born in Dublin, her father owned the football team Shamrock Rovers and she begged him to create a women's team so that she could play! She began training in drama and dance at the age of six, but her father insisted she learn bookkeeping and typing as something to fall back on. He needn't have bothered, as O'Hara soon caught the eye of Charles Laughton and Alfred Hitchcock, appearing alongside the former in the latter's Jamaica Inn and again with Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame

John Ford cast her in How Green Was My Valley, and it was the start of a collaboration between the director and her that was to last twenty years. She gave up acting in the late 60s and went on to become the first woman president of a US based scheduled airline company, but returned to the screen in 1991 to play John Candy's mother in the Marty-esque Only The Lonely. 

RIP

McLaglen Double Bill : Hellfighters (1968) Shenandoah (1965)

Today I found myself watching two films from the director Andrew V McLaglen who died in September of this year (read the obit I posted at the time here) No rhyme or reason to it, it was just that both films had been on Film 4.

On its release in 1968, Hellfighters was billed as John Wayne's most exciting action picture. Of course, it's anything but. This thinly fictionalised account of real life oil well firefighter Red Adair is far too talky, cliched and stultifying to be the most exciting action picture of anyone's career, let alone The Duke's. It's pure potboiler which wastes it's rather distinctive backdrop terribly.

It's a real shame a greater insight into the lives and technicalities of the men whose occupation it is to put out huge fires couldn't have been explored in any depth because that would have been a far more interesting story to have watched than the torpid tale of 'firefighter's widows' that Hellfighters actually is. Too much of the film concerns the oft spoken notion of 'this ain't no life for a lady', detaling as it does Wayne's own failed marriage to Vera Miles and the possibility of history repeating itself as his daughter Katherine Ross falls for his junior partner, the charisma free Jim Hutton.

Watch only for the very beautiful Katherine Ross who, under contract with Universal at the time, must have felt like she'd stepped into a different and out of touch world going from The Graduate to this.

I've got to say I've never really been that big a fan of John Wayne. I understand why for many he's an icon, I do so the appeal, but it has always been rather lost on me. However, my late grandfather had two heroes; Bing Crosby and John Wayne. As such I always feel a little bittersweet when I watch something featuring either of them, especially around Christmas time. It makes me feel close to him, but also makes me realise he's no longer around.

He loved a good western too, which brings me neatly to the second part of this double bill.

As I recently blogged here, I've always been a sucker for the American folk classic 'Oh Shenandoah'. My second McLaglen directed film of the day shares its name with that classic, Shenandoah, and it is also another film which features a performance by Katherine Ross, albeit it is a smaller role here than the one in Hellfighters, ironically playing the wife of a character played by John Wayne's son, Patrick.

Shenandoah is an impressive and respectable civil war drama concerning a firm but fair patriarch (the brilliant James Stewart) who is determined to keep his family out of the encroaching warfare but ultimately find themselves caught up in the Confederates last stand through sheer bad luck and misfortune. 

A strong Vietnam allegory, McLaglen's film from a screenplay by James Lee Barrett, doesn't shirk from its responsibility in addressing the futility of war and how, in their opinion, good fathers should keep their families at home and close. It's just a shame then that as the film progresses, McLaglen - never the subtlest of directors - feels the need to spell out everything to the viewer in an increasingly in your face manner; be it the merciless bloodshed (and suggested raping) the wild scavengers AWOL from their platoon undertake - which gives us a flavour of the fondness for grim tones he would later adopt for his 70s features - or the reunion between a Confederate boy and his childhood friend (a black youth now in a Yankee uniform) on the battlefield - which is clearly meant to be touching but he hits us over the head with such sentimental close ups of both actors you can't help but laugh and wonder if there was more than just friendship going on!

Shenandoah is definitely the strongest of the pair and one I'd recommend to anyone. It doesn't matter if you're not that big a fan of westerns, as the film works well enough as a timeless family saga and the desires we have to keep those we love protected and safe from harm. James Stewart gives an exemplary performance although some of his family aren't the best depicted or indeed fully dimensional characters. That said, the striking Rosemary Forsyth as his only daughter is especially captivating and gives Ross a run for her money.