Anniversary of the High Noon

On May 1, 1952, Fred Zinnemann's western film High Noon premiered in London. On July 24 of the same year this movie was released on the screens in US cinemas.

The fact that the film is a masterpiece, it became clear immediately to almost everyone who watched it. And later this was confirmed by numerous film awards, and box office receipts that exceeded the budget of the picture by more than 16 times, and more than favorable reviews from film critics. Perhaps for this reason, or maybe because the film was created in an extremely tense political situation that took place in the United States in the early 50s of the last century ("witch hunt", "red scare", the Korean War, etc.), but the appearance of the picture was accompanied by very sharp disputes about who made the greatest contribution to the creation of this masterpiece.

These disputes were reflected in the review of The New York Times film reviewer Bosley Crowther, published on July 25, 1952. Literally in the very first lines of this review, Crowther wrote:

"Which one of several individuals is most fully responsible for this job is a difficult matter to determine and nothing about which to quarrel. It could be Mr. Kramer, who got the picture made, and it be Scriptwriter Carl Foreman, who prepared the story for the screen. Certainly Director Fred Zinnemann had a great deal to do with it and possibly Gary Cooper, as the star, had a hand in the job."

The film critic didn't mention Grace Kelly. But this is quite understandable: for the 21-year-old future Princess of Monaco, it was only the second role in a full-length feature film in her life and the first main role.

Particularly sharp disputes were conducted, moreover, for more than half a century, between Carl Foreman ("The Bridge on the River Kwai"), on the one hand, and Stanley Kramer, and after his death, his widow Karen, on the other hand. There are two versions of the creation of the literary basis of the film. Carl Foreman claimed that he wrote the original script and it was he who owned both the initiative to create the film and the main role in producing the picture. The Kramers' version comes from the fact that Stanley Kramer was attracted by the story of a certain John W. Cunningham "Tin Star", published in 1947. Kramer allegedly bought the rights to the film adaptation of this story and commissioned Carl Foreman to write a script based on it.

It seems to me that today, and probably even then, this dispute could easily be resolved with the involvement of linguists or literary experts. But the trouble is that Carl Foreman, being included in the "black list" by the House Un-American Activities Committee, was forced to flee to the UK and, as a result, was, as they say, "struck in his political, and in all other rights."

Other controversies surrounding the film have been over whether it is an allegory of McCarthyist America or is just a western, a masterpiece, but just a western. The aforementioned Bosley Crowther is inclined to see Fred Zinneman's film as a high-class, highly artistic western, writing in his review:

"it ("High Noon" - FG) has a stunning comprehension of that thing we call courage in a man and the thorniness of being courageous in a world of bullies and poltroons.Like most works of art, it is simple—simple in the structure of its plot and comparatively simple in the layout of its fundamental issues and morals."

But the ardent anti-communist and McCarthyist John Wayne, the main star of almost all the famous American westerns, when he was offered the main male role in Zinnemann's film, turned it down, openly explaining that he considered Foreman's script an obvious allegory against the "witch hunt", which he actively supported. Moreover, he later said in an interview that he would "never regret having helped run Foreman out of the country". The role that Wayne refused went to another star of American cinema - Gary Cooper. This role brought to Cooper both the Golden Globe and the Oscar. It is curious that Cooper was absent from the Oscars, and the same Wayne received the golden statuette on his behalf.

A similar point of view to Wayne’s was expressed by the Russian film critic Yevgeny Nefyodov, who wrote in his review:

“Foreman in those years, during the rampant years of“ McCarthyism ”, was blacklisted and could not speak directly. And a direct analogy is easily seen in history between the case of Kane and the situation when millions of inhabitants of both towns and megacities preferred to lie low, go into the shadows, fearing for the safety of their own skin.... By the way, the film has a lot of "talking" details, caustic director's tips. So the decision to sustain the narration in the mode, as they would say now, real-time is like an additional evidence of the authenticity of the on-screen events of reality on this side of the film canvas. Zinnemann himself turned out to be almost the only one in Hollywood who dared to tell about the era of Senator McCarthy from the inside, ahead of Charles Chaplin, among others, with his daring, but filmed in the UK "The King in New York" / 1957 /."

This causticity, embedded in the film, was apparently sensed by both members of the American Film Academy and members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. In 1953, Fred Zinnemann's "High Noon" received seven nominations for both the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award. It was impossible to ignore this real phenomenon of American cinema. And in both cases it won in four categories. But not the most important ones. In the most important nominations - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay - much weaker filmmakers and films were preferred to Stanley Kramer, Fred Zinneman, Carl Foreman. Some of these winners just few people remember today. But the Danish Film Critics Association gave Fred Zinnemann's "High Noon" its Bodil Award for Best American Film.

Modern moviegoers appreciated Fred Zinneman's film "High Noon" no less than the audience a few decades ago. 67% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Fred Zinneman's film "High Noon" according to FilmGourmand version was 8,253, which allowed it to take 445th Rank in the Golden Thousand.