Irish Film Institute -HIGH NOON

HIGH NOON

Director: FRED ZINNEMANN

85 minutes| U.S.A.| 1952| Black and White| 35mm


Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) has just married and hands in his badge when he hears that Frank Miller, a gunman whom Kane sent to hang, has had a reprieve and is arriving back in town on the noon train. A tense countdown begins as one by one the townsfolk leave Kane to face the
Miller gang alone.

A brooding look at morality and duty in the face of certain defeat, the film was a commentary on the McCarthy witch-hunt and the failure of U.S. intellectuals to stand up to the House Un-American Activities Committee. John Wayne described it as the ‘the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life’. Due to significant pressure from Wayne, writer and producer Carl Foreman was blacklisted by HUAC. This was for a long time the most requested film for screening in the White House and its imagery was used by Solidarity in the first free elections in post-communist Poland.

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