Remember a few posts ago I drew your attention to Frederica Mathewes-Green's wonderful essay in this month's First Things? And she wondered about why Stars of the 40s & 50s always seem so much older than Hugh Grant (among others)? This weekend I watched High Noon for the first time.
Why, oh why, did I wait so long to see that wonderful movie? I am discovering Westerns all of a sudden. I grew up thinking they were cheesy, but I see that they aren't. They are great movies for people interested in political philosophy and the challenges or problems represented by the demands of law, freedom, character, etc. Good movies for our times. Not the Roy Rogers singing cowboy Westerns (which may be good, too, but I haven't seen any), and not the later Clint Eastwood so-called "spaghetti Westerns" (by Italian directors), but honest to goodness Westerns by John Ford, etc. (Ford was a devout Catholic by the way, and you see many classical themes in his flicks. . . .)
For those who don't know, the premise of High Noon is that Gary Cooper is a tough US Marshal who's brought law and order to a town where once decent women could not safely walk the streets and kids could not be raised. On his wedding day, word comes that a notoriously cutthroat killer Cooper captured and sent up North to be tried has been unexpectedly pardoned. The killer is coming for his revenge on the noon train, and three members of his gang are already at the depot waiting for him. The entire town owes its all to Cooper, but for various reasons (some worth pondering), not one man is willing to join a posse, so Cooper has to face four brutal killers alone.
This is where Mathewes-Green comes in. The one man who's willing to stand and fight with Cooper is his deputy (played by Lloyd Bridges so young you'll laugh), but he'll only do it for a price: Cooper has to recommend Bridges as his successor in office. Which Coop can't in conscience do. So. . .how does director Fred Zinneman show us visually that Lloyd Bridges is immature and has a lot yet to learn? He gives him Hugh Grant's hair! Then I realized I'd seen that same hair on the immature character in The Magnificent Seven. That unkempt schock of hair that says, "artsy" or "carefree," or whatever it's supposed to mean to us today, said "green" to another generation.
