MovieChat Forums > High Noon (1952) Discussion > A morality tale that doesn't take sides?

A morality tale that doesn't take sides?


When everyone shoots everyone else, how can you tell the bad guys from the good? That's the subversion.

reply

The prevailing contemporary view is that this film was intended as a microcosm of what was going on in America, in real time; an allegory of the blacklisting. But this is a Western by leftwing author / producer / director who didn't do westerns, at least one of whom was indeed a committed communist. The most compelling character in the movie is a Hispanic woman, seemingly a former sex worker or madam, who runs the town. I think it's fascinating that we seem to be so indoctrinated in first amendment ideology as to not even perceive the key central theme: the inescapable depravity of guns. There are no gun heroes. The five point star doesn't absolve the sheriff -- former sheriff, to be clear - who plots and kills four men in an hour, corrupting his Quaker pacifist bride in the process, when he could have just carried on up the wagon trail -- as everyone, individually and democratically, begged and instructed him to do. All except four people: the bloodthirsty hotel clerk, who says he speaks for all those who preferred benign anarchy to the iron fist of the law; the town drunk, wanting to prove his own mettle; a 14 year old boy with stars in his eyes; and the Hispanic woman, dressed in black -- the former lover of both Gary Cooper and his nemesis arriving on the noon train.

reply