Influencers & Inspiration Whereby the influence on set or in the theatre watching someone else’s film, inspires another…
High Noon (1952) is a western, tense and serious, shot in black and white with the classic, “Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,” playing throughout. Sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) has just gotten married to a prim and proper young beauty, Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), a Quaker. He’s turned in his badge and said his goodbyes when he’s warned of a killer and his gang’s eminent arrival on the train at high noon. A bad man who’s vowed to kill Kane for having sent him to jail. Rather than run, the Sheriff stays. Told in almost perfect real time, the minutes tick by as judge, deputy, friends, menfolk, in both the saloon and the church, all turn down his requests for help. The worst betrayal of all? Amy, who within minutes of taking her vows, plans on abandoning him, too.
Is High Noon a parable of good and evil? An indictment of the Hollywood Blacklist? A salute to America standing strong against her enemies? Only two things are certain: critics loved it and the director Howard Hawks hated it!
The director particularly hated how the Sheriff went around ‘begging’ for help. He decided to make a film that was the exact opposite of this critics’ darling. His Rio Bravo (1959) is a western with moments of humor, filmed in technicolor and includes the forgettable little ditty, “My Rifle, My Pony and Me.” Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) is committed to facing down the badmen who’ve come to town to kill him and free one of their own from his jail. And this Sheriff isn’t interested in volunteers. He actually tries to turn help away! Even a poker-playing, young beauty named Feathers (Angie Dickinson), stands by the Sheriff. Sometimes she stands by him in a fetching black corset. Why black? She’s a widow. Why a corset? Well, because, in her own words, she has a yen for him. And to describe the pace of Rio Bravo, one would have to use the word most often chosen to describe Howard Hawks himself: laconic.
High Noon vs. Rio Bravo; highbrow vs. popular. So, which film is thought of as the best? It’s a draw, pard’ner. Both have been selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry, meaning both have been deemed culturally, historically and aesthetically important – “Dagnabbit!” as Stumpy would say.
