Fred Zinnemann's classic Western was a movie well ahead of its time; a revisionist tale that avoided genre archetypes such as chase sequences and sprawling vistas to present an 85 minute real-time story of a small-town marshal taking on a gang of outlaws single-handed. Harshly criticized when it was first released for not adhering to the typical conventions of the Western, High Noon is now rightly regarded as one of the best movies ever made in the genre. Gary Cooper is on Academy Award winning form as Will Kane, one of cinema's most iconic heroes, and is backed up by a talented supporting cast including Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges and Lee Van Cleef. Audiences at the time were confused by a Western that adopted a more cerebral and moralistic approach than they were used to, with a script that favors character development over set-pieces, camerawork that ratchets up the tension and an iconic score all building to a crescendo before the final showdown. Genre icon John Wayne hated the movie, viewing it as an allegory for Hollywood blacklisting and calling it 'the most un-American thing' he had ever seen. He even went so far as to make Rio Bravo with Howard Hawks as a directly conservative response. Criticism aside, High Noon broke new ground for the Western by presenting a contained narrative that offered plenty in the way of tension and subverted the entire genre by presenting a hero that not was not only actively seeking help, but was saved in the end by a woman. I'm sure that in the 1950's, that would have been a huge deal.
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