I suppose that if duty, honor, and courage contrasted against cowardice, comfort and self-interest are un-American, then High Noon was un-American. (Or maybe the townspeople were the only Americans and Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, and Katy Jurado played Russians?)

Westerns for me meant the Duke, like El Dorado or Rio Lobo,or any of a dozen more.

Amen.

Some years ago in USA Today, a movie critic put together his personal “10 best” list of movies by genre, including Westerns. In a follow-up article, he said that leaving El Dorado off his list generated more mail than anything else he had ever written.

Owen Glendower on September 23, 2009 at 11:07 AM

It’s my number one favorite Duke flick. I’d guess Rio Lobo, made earlier and much like El Dorado would be second.

Westerns for me meant the Duke, like El Dorado or Rio Lobo,or any of a dozen more.

Amen.

Some years ago in USA Today, a movie critic put together his personal “10 best” list of movies by genre, including Westerns. In a follow-up article, he said that leaving El Dorado off his list generated more mail than anything else he had ever written.

the movie utterly slanders the American character as no other Western had ever done.

Uh, no. In most serious situations, when push comes to shove, people will bail, including Americans. However, it only takes one to make a difference.

Westerns for me meant the Duke, like El Dorado or Rio Lobo,or any of a dozen more. A non-Duke western I really liked was the Magnificent Seven, although that was a direct stealing from a Japanese movie, and a very good one at that called the Seven Samurai. I liked the modern westerns of Silverado and one of my all time favorite movies is Tombstone.

And I had always thought it was because half the time I could never tell if they were using a painted cardboard cutout of Gary Cooper or the real thing.

…

The theme of the lone individual doing what’s right, even when people won’t support him, is always a powerful one. High Noon narrates a tale with that compelling human theme, and the simple story itself is likely to far outlast the political drama that surrounded its production and release.

The joke is really on Foreman, if he was trying to subvert American iconography to make an anti-American point with the script. Americans who treasure the film put their own construction on its moral, and none of them see it as pulling the chain of the HUAC, parlor revolutionaries in Hollywood, or any part of “the establishment.” They see it as an enduring type of moral dilemma for a group of individuals, set against the most familiar landscape in our “tribal” consciousness.

The subversion of Foreman’s own intentions would seem to be complete in the movie’s Hollywood ending. The couple whose marriage is threatened end up alive, together, with the menace to them dispatched through gunfire. It don’t git more ‘Murrican than that.