50 STATES 50 MOVIES: NEW MEXICO
Anarchy And Individualism Was Really What Reigned In The Old West
High Noon
It’s hard to pinpoint a characteristic unique to New Mexico, and when it’s hard to, I usually turn to politics. A professor once told me “The window into a community’s soul is its politics.” When I applied this to New Mexico, I thought more about how it is the only state to have a Libertarian statewide official and was the home state of 2016 Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.
Today, New Mexico is synonymous with aliens. Stemming from the fable of the UFO crash in Roswell, the state almost always invokes images of little green men. Behind that though is the state’s extreme vastness. It’s not like an alien spacecraft is going to land in Times Square, right? It has to be somewhere rural. Fifth in size and 45th in population density, New Mexico is a rural state, situated where several different landscapes meet: the Chihauan Desert in the south and east, the grasslands of the Plains in the northeast, the rugged Rocky Mountains in the west and the fertile Rio Grande Valley running up the center like a spine. It makes sense that Libertarianism would thrive here. It’s much easier to be free when you’re living in a place that isn’t dense enough for everyone to keep their eyes on you.
That sense of individualism is at the heart of High Noon. Set during New Mexico’s territory days, High Noon takes place in the small town of Hadleysville. Though the movie fits in the Western genre, it’s more of an anti-Western. High Noon was Ronald Reagan’s favorite movie, but John Wayne, the King of the Westerns, hated it, calling it Un-American. The plot is unlike the basic Western. The town marshall, Will Kane (Gary Cooper) on his final day on the job, is forced to flee with his brand new wife, Amy (Grace Kelly) after finding out that an outlaw he once locked up and sent to be hanged, Frank Miller (Ian McDonald) is now free and rounding up his gang to come and seek vengeance. Miller’s brother, Ben (Sheb Wooley), and his henchmen Pierce (Robert Wilke) and Colby (Lee Van Cleef) arrive and tell the train station attendant that they are waiting for the noon train, which, along with a letter announcing Miller’s pardon, hints at what will go down at noon.
The movie takes place in real-time, in the 90 minutes between Will and Amy’s wedding at 10:30 am and Frank’s arrival at, when else? high noon. First, Will and Amy flee, but Will decides to go back to Hadleyville and face Frank and his gang. He notes, correctly, that Frank would find them eventually. When he arrives back in town, he tries to deputize the town’s male citizens but finds no one to support him, all with their selfish reasons to avoid fighting alongside their marshal. This is what Wayne hated about the movie; he felt that no American community would abandon their leader like that. The movie’s scriptwriter Carl Foreman had been hauled before the House Unamerican Activities Committee a year earlier to speak about his former membership with the Communist Party and found his friends and colleagues abandoning him, and Wayne, then president of the Motion Picture Association of America attempted to blacklist him. I’m sure that had nothing to do with Wayne, who turned down the role of Will’s, opinion of the movie.
Anyway, as Will and Amy flee, he is noticed by his deputy Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges). Pell is shacking up with Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado), a widow of Mexican descent who owns the town saloon and had past affairs with Will and Frank Miller. Ramirez is probably the shrewdest character in the movie and Jurado is stunning. This role made her the first Hispanic actress to win a Golden Globe, but, in my opinion, was robbed of an Oscar nomination.
The women in the movie are fascinating. Ramirez, despite planning to flee Hadleyville, presents herself as stoic in the face of the danger approaching. She breaks up with Harvey, sells the saloon to her employee Weaver, and gets ready to leave town on the noon train, along with Amy, who discovers her husband is not popular around town. There’s a moment when Weaver thanks Ramirez for allowing him to be part of her business where Weaver says “You know my wife thought…” and stops midsentence when Ramirez tightens up at the mention of his wife. The implication is Weaver’s wife had something against Ramirez, perhaps her ethnicity. It reminded me of the difficulties indigenous people faced in Western territories when white freedom-seeking Americans began arriving in the mid-19th Century. It’s likely Ramirez’ ancestors would have been in New Mexico before the Americans were.
Will asks Harvey for help, but Harvey refuses unless he gets named the new marshal – he is sore about being passed up – and when Will tells him he can’t do it, Harvey abandons him. Will goes to find Sam Muller (Harry Morgan) who hides from Will and tells his wife to lie for him. She tells Will he’s at church, which is Will’s next stop. The church scene is infuriating. The townspeople, including the mayor, Jonas Henderson (Thomas Mitchell) find every excuse in the book to abandon Will: the town’s reputation will be hurt; our taxes go to law enforcement to battle these guys for us, some are even angry at Will for “cleaning up the town.”
No good deed goes unpunished I guess.
Only two people, the physically disabled Jimmy the Gimp and a 14-year-old named Johnny offer to stand with Will, but neither’s offer is accepted. Will won’t put these two disadvantaged people in mortal danger. The only townsperson who agrees to be deputized, Herb, drops out when he finds out he’s the only one who agrees. At some point, you are left hoping Will gives in and gets on the train. You would forgive the betrayed Will if he pulled an Eric Cartman “screw you guys, I’m going home,” but Will is an honorable man.
Back at the hotel where Amy is waiting for the train. she spots Harvey coming in to see Ramirez. He goes up to her room where he sees her packing and pleads with her to stay, conveniently finding his gonads after jealousy gets the best of him. He offers to stand up to Frank for her (but not Will.) Ramirez dresses him down, bluntly calling him immature and saying she’s not sure he will ever “be a man” like Will. He kisses her and she tells him she’s leaving because Frank will kill the town along with Will, then she castigates Harvey for kissing her and slaps him. I am in love with this woman. We get more of her when Amy comes upstairs to visit. She assumes Will is staying in town to fight Frank for Ramirez and asks her to let her husband go, but Ramirez admits it’s not because of her – they haven’t spoken in a year – it’s because of his honor. She scolds Amy for leaving and not standing by her man, but Amy explains that she became a pacifist because she watched her brother and father murdered. I’m left wondering what the story behind that is. Was it in the Civil War? It’s notable to me that this is the only scene in which two women interact in the entire film.
Meanwhile, Harvey is down in the saloon getting drunk where he overhears the bartender praising Will’s courage. He storms off to the stables where he saddles a horse and tries to talk Will into leaving. The two fight and Will knocks Harvey out – for the first time, we’re left wondering perhaps if Will could take Frank Miller and his men on. Will then becomes resigned to his fate. He returns to his office and writes out his will and the sound of the approaching train’s whistle echoes through Hadleyville. It’s almost noon. The soundtrack to those last seconds of anxious anticipation, complete with with closeups of the characters, before the clock strikes noon and the train whistle begins blowing is some of the best filmmaking I’ve ever seen.
Amy and Ramirez take off for the station, passing a lonely Will in the street. Notably, Amy doesn’t even look at him, but Ramirez locks her eyes on him the entire time. The two arrive at the station and board the train; Ramirez catches eyes with Frank who is getting off the train and preparing for the gunfight. Now we get to the action.
The last 10-15 minutes of the movie are your traditional Western; guns, cowboy hats, and desert landscapes. Will fights the foursome alone, and at one point takes refuge in the stables. One of Frank’s men sets fire to the hay in the stables to smoke Will out. My concern though was for the horses in the stables, but Will saves them, riding one out in an interesting way to stay undetected. In the gunfight, Will is grazed by a bullet, but two of Frank’s men are killed.
Amy hears the gunshots and runs from the train just before it leaves. She takes shelter in Will’s office, where she spots Pierce reloading his pistol outside. Her love for Will overrides her hatred of guns and violence and she picks up a gun and shoots an unsuspecting Pierce from behind. Grace Kelly was said to have not liked her performance because Amy was “too wooden,” but her reaction here, immediately bowing her head as if she was ashamed felt raw. This is what happens when real life clashes with your rigid moral code. She had to break through her pacifism to save her husband. Welcome to anarchy!
Frank finds Amy and takes her at gunpoint, using her to flush Will out into the open. Of course, he complies, but Amy is not done showing us that she’s not some 19th-century hippie. She claws at Frank’s face, breaking loose from him and giving Will a clear shot to kill him. He does. The good guys win!
As Amy and Will embrace, the townspeople come scurrying out of their homes like rats descending on a meal. When Will glances out at the townspeople, who were all just feet away the entire time, Will gives them a death stare. I have never heard the phrase “Fuck every last one of you” said this loudly and without even uttering a word. He throws the marshal’s tin star badge into the dirt, gets in a wagon with Amy, and rides out of town. This is what won Cooper the Best Actor Oscar.
I can see why Wayne hated this movie, but let’s be honest, it’s much closer to the truth than most of the Westerns and cop shows we’re used to. Individual motivations drive man’s actions much more often than moral causes. Sometimes the two align, but Hollywood wouldn’t have to make so many movies that show such righteousness in storylines if we didn’t need to escape an ugly, defeating reality. This individualist nature was quite common in the anarchy of the Old West. Americans, tired of the stuffiness of the East Coast social orders, came to the expanse of the desert and steppe to make their own rules and live by their codes. That is, after all, what freedom is all about, and New Mexico was at the heart of that.