High Noon (Stanley Kramer; United Artists), creeping up on Hadleyville (pop. 400) one hot Sunday morning in 1870, is the moment of crisis for the little western cow town. Desperado Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), whose jail sentence has been commuted through a political deal, is coming back on the noon train to take his revenge on the marshal (Gary Cooper) who sent him up. The marshal is no hero; he has already turned in his badge and is leaving Hadleyville with his wife (Grace Kelly) to open a general store in another town. But he turns back. There is a job to be done, and law & order in Hadleyville are at stake.
The solid citizens of Hadleyville are not so civic-minded. When the marshal tries to deputize a posse against Gunman Miller, everyone in Hadleyville finds excuses. Even the marshal's Quaker wife walks out on him because she is against killing. In Ramirez' saloon, they are laying odds that the marshal is dead five minutes after Miller gets off the noon train. Left high & dry in a town paralyzed by fear and morally bankrupt, the sweating marshal has to face Miller and three of his fellow desperadoes alone. Around this dramatic situation is built that Hollywood rarity: a taut and sense-making horse opera that deserves to rank with Stagecoach and The Gunfighter as one of the best westerns ever made.
High Noon combines its points about good citizenship with some excellent picturemaking. Carl (Champion) Foreman's screenplay is lean and muscular, and as noteworthy for its silences as for its sounds. And Fred (The Men) Zinnemann's direction wrings the last ounce of suspense from the scenario with a sure sense of timing and sharp, clean cutting. The picture builds from 10:40 a.m. to its high noon climax in a crescendo of ticking clocks, shots of the railroad tracks stretching long and level into the distant hills and of the hushed, deserted streets of Hadleyville. Throughout the action, Dimitri Tiomkin's plaintive High Noon Ballad sounds a recurring note of impending doom.
Now & then High Noon falters, e.g., the moment when the marshal's wife suddenly shows up to help him plug the desperadoes is stronger on gunplay than on screenplay. And Grace Kelly is somewhat overglamorous as the wife. But the rest of the performances are up to High Noon's generally high level of writing and direction, particularly Lloyd Bridges as the edgy deputy marshal and Katy Jurado as the marshal's fiery ex-girlfriend. Gary Cooper, as the marshal, has one of the outstanding roles of his long acting career: a tired and unheroic gunfighter, doggedly stalking through the desolate streets of Hadleyville, his lone figure casting a long shadow before it as the heat and drama mount relentlessly to the crisis of high noon.