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Paramount
Pictures and MODA Entertainment
Present
A
50th Anniversary Celebration
HIGH
NOON
December
16th, 2002
PROGRAM
Welcome
from Pia Lindström
Introductory
remarks by Liam Neeson
Screening
of INSIDE HIGH NOON
documentary teaser
Screening
of HIGH NOON
feature film
Guest
panelists discussion and Q&A
Jonathan
Foreman
Maria
Cooper Janis
John
Mulholland
Tim
Zinnemann
Special
Guest
William
J. Clinton, the 42nd President of the United
States
HIGH
NOON was hailed upon its release in 1952 as an
instant classic. It won several Academy Awards,
including one for its legendary star, Gary Cooper.
It was named the year's best picture by the New
York Film Critics Society. And yet, even though
it's high on the American Film Institute's 100
Best Films of the Century, HIGH NOON's respect has
been hard won, indeed. Perhaps no other classic
film has had such a rocky road as this
"simple little western."
Decried
by influential auteurist critics and academics,
HIGH NOON has been attacked for being untrue to
the western genre - read anti-populist; for being
"middle-brow" (whatever that might
mean); for being social drama hiding behind the
western genre - and muddled social drama, at that;
for being the most un-American film ever made
(courtesy of John Wayne), etc.
However,
50 years after its release, HIGH NOON still
powerfully resonates with audiences around the
world. When Solidarity needed a universal image to
promote democracy and the right to vote in Poland
in 1987, they chose Gary Cooper in HIGH NOON, a
ballot in his hand rather than a gun.
Conservatives and liberals both manage to cite
HIGH NOON on the floor of Congress as a metaphor
for their competing political ideals. Political
cartoonists and headline writers inevitably use
HIGH NOON as reference for countless crises. Three
American Presidents - Eisenhower, Clinton and
current President Bush - call HIGH NOON their
favorite film.
On
one hand, HIGH NOON has been attacked for being a
conservative, damaging portrait of arrogant male
paternalism. On the other hand, HIGH NOON is
praised for challenging entrenched notions of
gender, for exploring masculine anxiety,
masculinity as a construct. Feminist critics and
academics are offering intriguing and complex new
readings to HIGH NOON.
Example:
Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly) is having her new
husband, Marshall Will Kane (Cooper), quit his
career, leave his town, leave his friends, marry
outside his church, and open a store of her
choosing (wearing, perhaps, an apron?). Does Will
Kane take on the villains at noon as a final gasp
of masculine protest, as a declaration of
independence from his wife's control?
Ernest
Hemingway compared a story's meaning to an iceberg
- like the iceberg, 7/8th of which lies hidden
beneath the surface, 7/8th of a story's meaning
lies beneath the surface.
Carl
Foreman's bare-to-the-bones script and Fred Zinnemann's equally spare direction are a perfect
film correlative to Hemingway's iceberg theory.
This taut, seemingly straightforward little
suspense western is complex, multi-layered, and
perhaps even more relevant today than when it
opened 50 years ago.
Excerpts
from the feature article HIGH
NOON, A LOOK FORWARD by Writer/Director
John Mulholland
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