Growing up in England, I never understood how anyone could possibly care about Westerns (anymore than I could imagine who the hell would actually listen to Country music...). They all seemed like the same story over and over and over and not even a story I could in any way relate to. It was like watching "Scooby Doo," minus the talking dog and with gun shots and big hats instead of ghosts and "pesky meddling kids." I avoided Westerns on TV the same way I instinctively changed the channel when faced by a rugby game or gardening program or party political broadcast for the Tories.
That would all change in my first year in college in the States, when I was actually watching Westerns with some context from my professors, seeing them on the big screen instead of packed tightly into our 14" telly. I saw "The Searchers" and "The Wild Bunch" and "Josie Wales" and started to really get it - or at least start to care about the best told stories, particularly the ones that took the accepted formula and mythology and did something different with it, something subversive or personal or beautiful.
But there was one exception right from the beginning, long before I re-patriated myself to the US for college. "High Noon" always made sense to me on a gut level even if I couldn't care less about the mythology of the West or John Wayne or Hop-along-whatsisname. And it still speaks to me in the same way. "High Noon" is just damn good visual storytelling - disciplined and efficient, almost existentialist in its depiction of a man alone in the face of his mortality and yet always utterly human and relatable.
So much of that has to do with its central character and the man playing him. Will Kane isn't an archetype or a superheroic gunslinger - he's never anything other than a man who doesn't just want to do the right thing, but is physically incapable of doing otherwise because his conscience and values won't let him do anything else. Gary Cooper has the right physical presence - upright, dignified and solid - without any of the grandiosity, posturing or smugness typical of a Western hero. Kane has no interest in glory or martyrdom - he has no more interest in dying at the hands of the Miller gang than any of the townsfolk who leave him hanging and he feels real fear of death and suffering. What makes him a hero isn't his fearlessness - it's his dogged persistence in the face of that fear, all the while knowing exactly what he's getting himself into as the situation becomes more and more desperate.
There's a great character moment where Kane comes in to ask the help of the local carpenter / store owner, whose laborer is out back busily and noisily working on constructing the new coffins the store owner knows will be needed in the afternoon. Embarrassed, the store owner tells his worker off-screen to hold the work and continues his conversation with Kane pretending that nothing's wrong. Cooper's deadpan is perfect as he wraps up his business with the store owner then turns and tells him with a look that shows just slightest trace of irony that he can tell his man to get back to work.
Kane knows exactly what the shopkeeper's man is working on, and in that subtly knowing look lets the shopkeeper know that he knows the score and isn't going to pretend that he doesn't. Marshal Will Kane may be about to die within the hour, but he's not about to start bullshitting himself or anyone else or go along with the comfortable lies and pretenses the 'good folk' of the town use to avoid doing a damn thing when the danger is real.
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