MOVIE CHRONICLE
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a mere backdrop of beautiful scenery. (It is significant that
The Ox–
Bow Incident
has no hero; a hero would have to stop the lynching
or be killed in trying to stop it, and then the "problem" of lynching
would no longer be central.) Even in
The Gunfighter
the women and
children are a little too much in evidence, threatening constantly to be–
come a real focus of concern instead of simply part of the given frame–
work; and the young tough who kills the hero has too much the air
of juvenile criminality: the hero himself could never have been like
that, and the idea of a cycle being repeated therefore loses its sharpness.
But the most striking example of the confusion created by a too con–
scientious "social" realism is in the celebrated
High Noon.
In
High Noon
we find Gary Cooper still the upholder of order
that he was in
The Virginian,
but twenty-four years older, stooped,
slower moving, awkward, his face lined, the flesh sagging, a less beauti–
ful and weaker figure, but with the suggestion of greater depth that
belongs almost automatically to age. Like the hero of
The Gunfighter,
he
no longer has to assert his character and is no longer interested in the
drama of combat; it is hard to im'agine that he might once have been
so youthful as to say, "When you call me that-smile!" In fact, when
we come upon him he is hanging up his guns and his marshal's badge
in order to begin a new, peaceful life with his bride, who is a Quaker.
But then the news comes that a man he had sent to prison has been
pardoned and will get to town on the noon train; three friends of this
man have come to wait for him at the station, and when the freed con–
vict arrives the four of them will come to kill the marshal. He is thus
trapped; the bride will object, the hero himself will waver much more
than he would have done twenty-four years ago, but in the end he
will
play out the drama because it is what he "has to do." All this belongs
to the established form (there is even the "fallen woman" who under–
stands the marshal's position as his wife does not). Leaving aside the
crudity of building up suspense by means of the clock, the actual Western
drama of
High Noon
is well handled and forms a good companion
piece to
The Virginian,
showing in both conception and technique the
ways in which the Western movie has naturally developed.
But there is a second drama along with the first. As the marshal
sets out to find deputies to help him deal with the four gunmen, we
are taken through the various social strata of the town, each group in
turn refusing its assistance out of cowardice, malice, irresponsibility, or
venality. With this we are in the field of "social drama"--<>f a very low
order, incidentally, altogether unconvincing and displaying a vulgar
anti-populism that has marred some other movies of Stanley Kramer's.
