High Noon at Glasgow Film Theatre
25 August, 2022 at 6.15 p.m.
High Noon – like Casablanca – is accepted as one of the quintessential classic American films and whose title has gone into the lexicon when Americans reference a tough decision. Its hero’s dilemma is the very epitome of the western genre where ‘a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.’ However, against the background of the turmoil of America’s communist witch hunt – when the Government’s House un-American Committee was trying to weed out reds-under-the-bed, High Noon reflected a more contemporary complex personal dilemma.
It was written by Carl Foreman who, like many others in the 1930s and 1940s, had been members of the communist party and was being called to testify. The film increasingly became a metaphor for the encroaching decision and the surrounding febrile atmosphere. Both Foreman and Austrian-born director Fred Zinneman wanted to avoid Western cliches and gave the film a tightly bound focus rather than the wide vistas common in the genre.
John Wayne described High Noon as ‘the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life’, yet it has become the most watched film by presidents in the White House.
Screening in a 4K restoration.
GFT 12 Rose Street, Glasgow G3 6RB
(Image: United Artists, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

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