Lunchtime in Hadleyville

High Noon (1952), which I hadn’t seen before last week, has the distinction of being my first Classic Hollywood Western. To be clear, I’ve seen plenty of westerns. Most were even made in the Hollywood studio system. But it seems that all of the westerns I’ve seen (and loved) have been left of centre: ironic, jaded (Unforgiven), sentimental (Once Upon a Time in the West) or simply ground breaking (Stagecoach). After sitting through dozens of revisionist westerns, I can safely say that I’ve never seen a true, honest-to-goodness, middle-of-the-road, baggage-free western: the kind with the untarnished hero and the simple white-hat and black-hat conflict. A bona-fide Classic Hollywood Western.

Now having seen High Noon, I understand completely why an entire generation of kids grew up playing sheriff. I recognize the appeal of the staunch, besieged lawman. I see all of the reasons why directors like Leone and his Italian peers paid so much attention to reworking and saluting the Old West. High Noon is the sort of confection that inspires daydreams and puts people on the road to making movies.

The film starts on exactly the right foot by introducing a supporting thug played by Lee Van Cleef, entirely dialogue-free and looking astonishingly young. Here’s the thing: I love Lee Van Cleef. With a dash of Van Cleef in the recipe, I’m immediately having a good time no matter what I’m watching. I’m certain that he is the best thing to come out of the Leone spaghetti westerns, save for the Morricone scores and the Leone close-ups. But seeing him this young and in this role, throws a whole wagonload of new baggage on his roles in the Leone films. It’s easier than ever to imagine him as a young Sentenza (the second part of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly equation.) [I have to confess that it bothered me for a few minutes, trying to pinpoint who the young Lee Van Cleef was reminding me of – but My God, when it came, what a revelation! It’s true that Van Cleef in High Noon is the spitting image of a young Snoop Dogg.] Apart from Van Cleef, the film is stuffed with a ton of delicious and familiar character actors: Lloyd Bridges, Harry Morgan, Lon Chaney Jr. and even Jack Elam, who shows up as one of the three killers at the start of Once Upon a Time in the West.

Force me to put my finger on the thing I enjoyed most about this movie, and it would be spotting the legion of connections to the later westerns that I’ve grown to adore. The action is set up quickly (it has to be – the movie unfolds in real time) and within minutes the bad guys of the film are waiting on the platform of a train station for the their brother, the arch-villain of the movie, to arrive. The angles on the train station and the layout of the buildings are practically identical to the opening frames of Once Upon a Time in the West. One of the waiting goons even has the good sense to pull out a harmonica. While none of this really surprises me, it’s a good thing when a fine movie forces your appreciation of not just one, but several other films. There’s a domino effect here that is really exciting.

Still there is one flaw that I need to pick at. The name of the flaw in this instance comes above the marquee, and it’s Gary Cooper. I’m sure Cooper is an excellent actor and a worthwhile addition to most movies he’s in. He emotes well and his eyes carry a sadness that lends a lot of gravity to whatever’s happening around him. Crap, he won an Oscar for his part in this movie. Even so, he’s clearly the wrong man to carry this movie. To start with, he seems much too old to play the sheriff, even if the sheriff is soon to retire (forget that he’s a newlywed!) We’re told that he captured and arrested Frank Miller (our villain) 5 years before the start of the movie, but this seems unlikely. If it’s true, then his energy and spirit have drained tremendously in the years that followed because Cooper has the passion of a piece of plywood. Worse still, he seems more like an office manager than a lawman, with the sort of face you’d find in a bank not in a dusty frontier town. This dissonance is most evident in a fistfight that happens at the mid-point of the movie. In action, Cooper seems stiff and decrepit, making the fight feel as stiffed and choreographed as most late-career Hulk Hogan matches. Only without the sense that Cooper could’ve won the scrap a decade earlier.

Despite Cooper’s wooden performance, the movie still manages to build an aggressive amount of momentum. Like the training arriving at noon, the plot of the film picks up speed the longer it plays, accelerating to a dizzying pace in the final reel. In many ways, the film is like a bomb waiting to go off, only the audience has been told exactly when to cover their ears. The clock ticks and the editor gets busier. The countdown builds and, well, look who I'm talking to. You remember what it was like in 3 O’Clock High, don’t you?

It’s pretty great stuff.