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Volume 22, Number 4 (1998) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum LAW AND THE AMERICAN WESTERN: HIGH NOON MARY P. NICHOLS* In this essay, I trace three levels of High Noon’s complex portrayal of our relation to law. First, we follow the breakdown of law in Hadleyville as Frank Miller’s train approaches. As the community disintegrates, the two sides of American individualism become apparent: the lonely heroism of Marshall Will Kane and the selfish and fearful withdrawal of citizens into their private lives. Law is a precarious bond for community because it cannot command the virtues required for its support. The threat of the returning outlaw makes manifest the lawless potential of the town itself. At the end of the movie, Kane drops his badge into the dirt and rides away. The community he risked his life to defend is not worth the trouble. Hadleyville does not deserve Will Kane.1 When the community deserts Kane, many in town, even Kane’s new bride, question why he is staying to fight. If the town is not worth it, does Kane stay primarily for his own sake, simply because he is a man, and as the movie’s ballad states, “if you’re a man, you must be brave?” Does Kane stay for the town or for himself? Perhaps Kane’s deeds derive their worth not so much from the orderly and peaceful life they make possible for the community as from the human excellence they manifest. Could the law abidingness his deeds make possible be of less value than the deeds themselves? And yet courage for its own sake is ultimately flawed: Frank Miller is no coward, but no decent person is happy that he is returning to town. Kane’s courage transcends the law and community it serves, but without those goals the line between him and Miller becomes obscure. Helen Ramirez, the owner of the town’s saloon and a lady of questionable repute, had been a friend—at different times—to both Miller and Kane. But Kane is no Frank Miller. And in spite of his attraction to Helen, Kane chooses to marry a Quaker, give up his badge, and settle down. Kane gives up his badge not because the way of life his deeds support is flawed but because he chooses a version of that very way of life—a home with his new wife within the confines of law and community. As the movie’s protagonist, not only does Kane stand alone against Frank Miller and his friends, but he also embodies the tensions in law and politics more generally. The lawman, High Noon suggests, has an ambiguous status—always in the service of what is beyond himself and yet sometimes entailing and even requiring a lofty preeminence over what he serves. Finally, we shall see the extent to which High Noon also demonstrates how movies can foster an understanding of law that preserves these tensions, and therewith the vitality of political life. “Government by law, rather than by men” has been an ideal of Western civilization for a long time. The advantage of law as a restraint on both rulers and ruled is clear. Its limits, less obvious, are implied by those very restraints. When Will Kane is reproached by a citizen in High Noon for not jailing the three gunmen waiting for Miller’s train, he explains that he “hasn’t anything to arrest them for.” There is no law against their sitting on a bench at the depot. A ruler with absolute power of course would not face Will Kane’s problem. If he brought a killer to trial and sentenced him to hanging, that sentence would not be commuted by others to life imprisonment nor would the killer later be pardoned. Such an autocrat has a simpler task. He would not confront the dilemmas Kane faces where laws provide checks on arbitrary rule, even in the form of higher courts and executive pardons. Our statesmen, in one way or another, must be “lawmen.” But, as we see from High Noon, those very checks, the hallmark of free government, must be enforced, and underlying all enforcement is individual will and purpose, and therefore the possibility of blindness and venality. The movie does not tell us why Frank Miller’s sentence was commuted, and Miller then pardoned. Did those who took these official actions not know “who Frank Miller is,” and have the courage to act on that knowledge? Underlying the government of laws is a government of men, and law must therefore be supplemented by virtue, or, as High Noon puts it, brains and guts.2 A government of law, paradoxically, requires virtues and offers opportunities for their exercise not needed or found where there is government only by men. The American West manifests the dilemmas of law and rule in an acute form. The weakness of law in the West makes clearer its advantages; a lawless state is closer at hand. Will Kane had made Hadleyville fit for women and children, but only in recent years, as the townsfolk keep reminding one another. At the beginning of High Noon, Will and Amy are married by a judge whose “authority [is] vested by the laws of this territory.” A “territory” falls somewhere between wilderness and statehood, for while there are territorial laws, statehood lies in the future, and outlaw rule always near at hand. Will Kane’s presence has held elemental forces in check, forces that threaten to erupt when he leaves. Jonas, head of the town’s Board of Selectmen, believes that the retiring marshall and newlywed have made the town safe until the new marshall arrives, but Frank Miller has friends remaining in town, and there are some, like the hotel manager, who suppose that Kane deserves a comeuppance. A territory, neither entirely lawless nor entirely safe for women and children, can go either way. Given the weakness of the law, it is more important to have a lawman, but more difficult for one to be so. Thus the American West—and the American Western—not only lets us see the advantages of the rule of law over that of men but also its limits, and the extent to which the rule of law must be supplemented by the virtues of men. High Noon does this especially well. When the news comes of Frank Miller’s pardon and expected arrival on the noon train, Kane has just turned in his badge and is preparing to leave with his bride. All Kane’s friends, including his bride Amy, urge him to leave as planned, but Kane does not get far from town before telling Amy he must return. Hadleyville is his town, he explains, and he has friends there. Nor can he run from Frank Miller, who has sworn to kill him. Moreover, he tells Amy, Miller would only come after them anyway. As high noon approaches, Kane asks for help from various people in the town, and finds none. At high noon he stands alone on the deserted street, awaiting the shootout that likely means his death. High Noon is about Kane’s courage, as the movie’s ballad indicates. But the movie is also about community, and the elements in human nature that undermine it—not only the evil represented by Miller, but the fear, jealousy, and indifference of the people in the town, and even the strongly-held religious principles of Kane’s Quaker wife. The first words of the song are also the first of the movie, “Do not forsake me.” While these are words that Will might and does in effect say to Amy, he might also say them to Hadleyville. But while he does not forsake the town as Miller approaches, everyone there forsakes him, including Amy. Her Quaker beliefs do not allow her to accept violence in any form. And if Will insists on staying, she tells him, she will leave for St. Louis on the same noon train that brings Miller to town. Not surprisingly, Kane turns first to the legal authorities, beginning with the judge who married him that very morning. But this is also the judge who sentenced Frank Miller, and he is packing to leave. While he claims there “is no time for a lesson in civics,” he does give Kane a brief one: in 5th century BC Athens, the citizens drove out a tyrant, only to welcome him when he returned, and to stand by when he executes members of the legitimate government. The judge had experienced something similar himself eight years earlier in a town like Hadleyville, which he survived only by a quick departure. And he will survive to judge again—elsewhere. The judge thus illustrates the truth that Will tried to tell Amy—if I run now, I will only have to run again, and again. But he also illustrates that one might do some limited good. He is not a coward. And he knows that he survived an earlier rough situation not because of the law’s authority but only because a lady of “dubious reputation” helped him escape, perhaps a lady like Helen Ramirez in Hadleyville. Kane’s deputy, Harvey Pell, is found visiting Helen Ramirez’s apartment. He is Helen’s “man,” as was Kane, and Frank Miller before him. Helen points out to Harvey that Kane must be looking for him. But Harvey is, as Helen Ramirez notes, “sore at Kane,” and indeed, sore at the world, for being passed over for the job of marshall by the Board of Selectmen which has chosen an outsider who has not yet arrived. Harvey offers to help Kane against Miller only on the condition that Kane support him for the job of marshall. When Kane refuses his offer, Harvey turns in his badge. Like everyone else in town, Harvey offers no help. “Why is it so important to you?” Kane asks him later when Harvey urges him to ride away, “You don’t care if I live or die.” When the two men start fighting, the question is left unanswered. Why is it so important to Harvey that Kane leave? Earlier, when Harvey watched Kane and his new wife go “off in a big hurry,” he gloated to Helen, “you don’t suppose Kane’s scared of those three gunnies?” Harvey’s pleasure inadvertency reveals what the movie makes clear: Kane is the standard to which Harvey cannot measure up. He has taken Kane’s place with Helen, and would now like to replace him as marshall. But Harvey cannot be Will Kane, and hates him for the virtues he does not himself possess. In Helen’s view as well, Harvey falls short. As she tells Harvey, “you have big, broad shoulders, you are a good looking boy, but not a man.” Harvey is not simply a bad man, for his envy indicates not only his lack, but the virtues he wants for himself. Kane is an affront to Harvey.3 In Amy, the Judge, and Harvey, Kane finds little support. While his friend Herb volunteers to be a deputy because he supposes others will do so as well, another friend, Sam, gets his wife to tell Kane he is not home. Kane fares no better, in either the saloon or the church, when he appeals for help. In the saloon he finds speculation about how long he will live after the noon train arrives, and men pleased that Frank Miller is returning. At the church, in contrast, no one is pleased about Miller’s impending return. Religion proves more supportive of law and commu-nity. When Kane’s appeal causes a ruckus in the church, Jonas restores order: “if there’s a difference of opinion, let everyone have a say.” In contrast violence in the saloon between the bartender and Kane, the church is a place of civil discussion and deliberation. Yet, even the churchgoers voice excuses: Kane is no longer marshall, there’s personal trouble between him and Miller; aren’t we paying for the law to protect us?; this is not our job; if Kane had arrested those three criminals and put them behind bars, we would have only Miller to face; how do we know that Miller is on that train anyway? Even the parson, who remains silent until Jonas calls on him, does not ask his people to risk their lives. Jonas does warn that “it’s our problem, because it’s our town,” and proclaims that “we must have courage to do what we think is right if we want to keep it,” but he concludes that Kane must leave. He locates the common good in avoiding bloodshed, so that no reputa-tion for violence will prevent Northerners from sending money to Hadleyville for factories and jobs. If Kane goes, Jonas reasons, there will be “no trouble”; the town’s good, not simply Kane’s, demands that he go. The only one left to whom Kane can appeal for help is now too old to fight, his old friend Mart, the town’s former marshall, who got Kane his job. But Mart, who as Kane says has been “a lawman all [his] life,” believes that “it’s all for nothing,” and tells Kane that “in the end you die all alone on some deserted street.” There is no dignity in being a lawman. Guns in the saloon, religion, and democracy are poor resources against the lawlessness of Miller. After the shootout, the townsfolk run out from where they have been hiding, Kane drops his badge into the dust, gets in his carriage and rides away with his wife. Where are they going? Back east, or another community in the West? We do not know, but does it matter? Is not human nature the same everywhere, however much the trappings of civilization camouflage it, whether in 5th century BC Athens or in the American West? Has Will Kane finally learned, from his experience, the lesson in civics that the fleeing judge tried to teach? And is this what we learn from his story? whom the movie presents as something of an enigma. When Harvey asks Kane why he will not help him become the next marshall in exchange for his support against Miller, Kane answers only that “if you don’t know, it’s no use me telling you.” When Kane announces to Amy he is returning, she does not understand. But even after he tells her about Miller, Amy still does not understand his decision. Just as Harvey suspects that Kane is angry about him and Helen Ramirez, Amy suspects that Kane is staying because of Helen. They are as mistaken as Mart, who although he has been a lawman all his life, thinks that someone staying under such circumstances must want to commit suicide. By the end of the movie, even Kane himself does not seem certain of what moves him, for he admits to Harvey, perhaps in a moment of weakness, that he himself doesn’t know why he can’t leave. Why, then, does Kane stay? Does Kane stay simply because he is a man, and “If you’re a man, you must be brave”? Is Kane’s lone heroism a life ultimately as outside the law as that of the outlaw? Is this the truth that becomes visible when Kane is stripped of every support a community should afford its lawman? So stripped, Kane seems to have no reason for staying—except himself, and his own virtue. Although Kane comes close to giving his life for the law and then dying alone, deserted, he does not as Mart claims believe that “it is all for nothing.” Mart, at Kane’s wedding, agreed with Amy that he could imagine Will Kane running a store. He himself had given up his badge, and we now see him at home with his wife. But then he was not the marshall Kane was, for when Mart had been marshall, the town still needed Kane to restrain its outlaws and make it safe for women and children. Mart lacks Kane’s virtues, but benefits when men like Kane possess them. There is no reason to assume that even after a life of storekeeping, a Will Kane, arthritic and all, would not be at the depot at high noon. Kane knows that “it is not for nothing.” Those in town who have trouble seeing Kane minding a store, Kane himself among them, glimpse the truth in the song: courage is an end, not simply a means. When Helen Ramirez tells Kane she knows he cannot leave, it is possible she understands the point as well. It is Helen Ramirez who seems to understand Kane best. As the hotel manager tells Amy, Helen Ramirez used to be “your husband’s friend.” Because Helen understands Kane, or at least thinks she does, she does ask the question everyone is asking. Helen knows Harvey is not a man in part because she knows Kane. Even Amy senses that Helen knows something about her husband she does not, for she finally goes to Helen to find out why he is staying to face Miller. Helen knows enough to know, as she tells Amy, that if Amy doesn’t know she can’t explain it to her. Helen, however, is not without resentment toward Kane. When Kane comes to her apartment after a long absence, after he marries Amy, she asks why he has come. Has he come to beg her to plead for him with Frank Miller, she asks sarcastically. She informs him she would not lift a finger for him. Helen, of course, knows that this is not why he has come, and we sense her anger.4 When Amy asks her whether it is because of her that Will is staying in town, Helen had an opportunity to cause problems between Amy and Will, but she tells Amy the truth; she and Kane have not spoken in over a year. She tells Amy that “if Kane were my man, I’d get a gun; I’d fight.” She is not going to do so, she admits when Amy asks, “because Kane is not my man, he’s yours.” While Helen may be instrumental in helping Amy to make her final decision to help Will, she rides off alone. The train that brought Frank Miller to town, and was to take Amy away, takes only Helen herself. Why, however, is Kane not Helen’s man? As Harvey asks Helen, but gets no answer, “Who did the walking out anyway, you or him?” Is Helen not the proper match for Will? We can believe her when she claims that if Kane were her man she would be using a gun to help him. When Miller gets off the train, Helen stares him straight in the face. Frank Miller has been painted as the devil, and Helen seems quite willing to confront this devil. Coward she is not. Indeed, Helen’s strength seems to parallel Kane’s when she refuses to measure herself against Amy, in the way that Harvey measures himself against Will. Is it a defect in Will to prefer Amy Fowler to Helen Ramirez? The movie hints at Kane’s complex character when we see him visit the saloon and the church looking for help. Will does not fit comfortably at either place.5 In the saloon he finds friends of Frank Miller’s, while the parson reproaches him for not “[coming] to this church very often.” But neither saloon nor church is completely alien to him. He obviously knows his way to “Ramirez’s saloon,” just as he knows his way (as the hotel manager points out) to Helen Ramirez’s room. And although Kane admits, “I haven’t been a churchgoing man,” he also acknowledges that “maybe that’s a bad thing.” Neither saloon nor church possess him entirely, precisely because something of each does possess him. Although he chooses to marry Amy, Kane had been “a friend” of Helen Ramirez, for as long as four years.6 If courage itself were a good, to the exclusion of good ends that courage serves, it would not matter to the courageous man whether he lived or died, as long as he were courageous. Will is brave, but he does not want to die. He knows the odds are against him, and even though he does not yield to the temptation, he thinks about riding away. As the song has it, he does not want to “lose [his] fair-haired beauty.” “Being a man” requires “being brave,” but human virtue requires understand-ing that courage is a means as well as an end. And that is one reason why human excellence requires “brains” as well as “guts.” Amy offers something that Helen does not—the promise of marriage, children, respectability, more generally, a home. One might suppose that Amy is “ordinary, drab, and uninteresting,”7 but perhaps a more exciting Amy would belie the ordinary domesticity that is her attraction. But Amy is not a meek woman: she has chosen to be a Quaker, and intends to stick by her principles even when they demand that she forsake the man she loves and face life alone. The “guts” she herself shows at the end of the movie—and even her shooting a man in the back to save her husband—are therefore not out of character. We cannot be sure, as even Kane is not, what the life of a shop-keeper might entail. Kane does not know whether he can cut it as a shopkeeper, as he jokes at his wedding, and live the life his Quaker wife has in store for him, but he is determined, he tells her in private, to do his best. He understands that lawmen serve others, that politics is an instrument to protect the rights of individuals, their individual choices, and their private lives. Politics is not simply an end in itself, but makes possible private happiness and the life of moral and religious integrity that Amy—and Will—desire. This is what Kane chooses in marrying Amy. Kane has done his part as marshall in bringing about the peace and security that such domestic happiness requires. His leaving Helen, marrying Amy, and resigning his badge, are therefore all of a piece. He chooses that which the laws serve. He chooses the domesticity that is the American dream, the domesticity that is the end of liberal regimes and politics. Although Helen thinks she understands Kane, she claims not to understand Amy. “What kind of woman are you?” she asks. But if she must ask this question, can she understand why Kane loves Amy? If, unlike Amy, she can understand why Kane would not leave town when Frank Miller returns, can she understand why Will might leave town with Amy when no threat looms? While she appreciates something about Will Kane that Amy does not, Amy may appreciate something about him that Helen does not. Kane is not Helen’s man, because Helen is the “kind of woman” who can be Frank Miller’s “friend.” Amy could never be because her own religious principles abhor such a man. Frank Miller is antithetical to the life she wants for herself and Will. She is attracted by Will’s courage, which she does not fully comprehend, but she is not attracted by courage for its own sake. As she tells Will, “you don’t have to be a hero for me.” Helen, in contrast, knows that Kane is not choosing to be courageous, but that he simply is. She cannot fully appreciate, however, Kane’s connection to the town, and therefore why he would be marshall. As we have seen, Kane thinks of Hadleyville as “my town,” and has friends, but Helen “hates the town” and has few friends. Unlike the townspeople who suppose that their community can endure without Kane, Helen knows that without Kane, the law will find them. But when she undervalues the law as a good independent of the lawman, she obscures the difference between a lawman and an outlaw. She knows the difference between Kane and Miller, but she does not know it well. And that may be part of the reason she leaves when Miller returns. We know she is not afraid that Miller will hurt her, as some suggest, but perhaps she is afraid that she will return to him. Helen always refers to Will as Kane. A surname connects to the past and is used typically by men addressing men. Amy, in contrast, always calls him Will. While the use of another’s first name shows signs of familiarity and intimacy, Will’s name in particular suggests a potential for choice, for freedom. It was Helen who thought that Kane could not leave town when Miller returned, and Amy who thought that he could. When Helen herself leaves town, she feels she has no choice. As a Mexican woman in Hadleyville, she has felt the weight of necessity. And Amy herself has made choices—her Quaker principles are chosen, not a religion in which she has been raised. Amy and Helen each characteristically focus on a different side of Will Kane. Amy does not want Will to put on his badge again, nor does she agree with him that he is the same man with or without it. Like Helen, she does not see the way in which law is essential to Will. Although Helen does not see the extent to which the law deserves respect as an end, and Amy the extent to which it deserves respect as a means, they both undervalue the law. After all, they both ride away together, to catch the noon train leaving Hadleyville. When Amy takes her seat at the train window and hears a shot, she jumps off the train and runs back to do her part. We see, finally, that Quaker principles or no, she shoots a man who is about to shoot her husband, and then claws Frank Miller’s eyes when he tries to use her as a shield. That is, we see, finally, why Kane is Amy’s man, and that the reason has as much to do with Amy as it does with Kane. Amy chooses to fight, when the situation brings home to her the concrete implications of her principles. She chose to become a Quaker when she saw her father and brother killed; having learned the consequences of violence, she now learns the consequences of avoiding it. When Will’s life is threatened she learns to face necessity, and that worthwhile ends be realized without embracing the means to achieve them. Under trying circumstances Amy demonstrates the kind of courage we associate with Will Kane. Amy is “Kane’s woman,” for she is the one able, if anyone is, to help him build a life where courage is valued. Amy, too, is a hero, for at high noon she demonstrates that the virtues of a marshall square with those of a storekeeper. One of the most telling lines of the song, is “If I’m a man, I must be brave.” The words suggest not only a concept of manliness, but also that men such as Kane act out an ideal of manhood. When he is “torn betwixt love and duty,” his duty is not only to the town or to his office as marshall, but to himself, to act according to his view of how a man should act. But what is Kane’s duty to the town and the law he has sworn to uphold? The song mentions “vow” only once, and it is one taken by Frank Miller who “made a vow while in state prison/Vowed it would be my life or his’n.” While we may assume that Miller’s “vow” was not sanctioned by an oath taken on the Bible, we also may assume that Will Kane’s was when he became a marshall. Although there is some legal ambiguity as to whether Kane is still marshall, inasmuch as he has officially turned in his badge after his wedding, the new marshall has not yet arrived. Kane’s putting his badge back on decides the matter. Does duty to the law not weigh into Kane’s conflict between love and duty? Might that duty under other circumstances not conflict with Kane’s duty to himself? And insofar as there is ambiguity as to who is forsaking whom, the song’s reference to the “promise when we wed” reminds us of a possible conflict between love and duty in part Kane’s self-love and his duty to his wife. The alternatives the song presents, “I must face that deadly killer, or lie a coward, a craven coward, in my grave,” are strange alternatives. If Kane proves a coward, he would be less likely to lie in his grave in the near future. And if he lies in his grave it would likely be because he has proved a brave man (and faced Miller and his gunmen). Of course, we all will eventually lie in our graves. Mistakes can be corrected, and misdeeds repented, but will there be time? And how long can we put off being true to our principles, and still have principles? The importance of the clock we see throughout High Noon is not so much that the clock points to a certain time, but that it points to time. Its “big hand,” is always “moving near high noon.” The final line of the song states, “I can’t be leaving, until I shoot Frank Miller dead.” Does this song come from a lawman? Five years before, Kane had arrested Miller, and after a legal trial the judge sentenced him to hang. And now, as Kane said of the three gunmen waiting at the depot, Miller has done nothing for which Kane may arrest him, and he certainly cannot bring him to trial for a crime for which he has been pardoned. Yet even the expectation of Miller’s arrival presages the return of lawlessness to Hadleyville: “there will be a hot time in the old town tonight,” say those who open the saloon on a Sunday morning immediately after hearing the news of Miller’s return. Does the failure of the law tempt Kane himself to become a lawless man? After all, he did slug the bartender in the saloon, and admits that he had “no call” to do it. When Amy resists Will’s reclaiming his badge, he tells her, “I am the same man with or without this.” But he does put on the badge because wearing the badge in the situation he finds himself does make a difference. He is simply a lawman, even if being a lawman is not simple. Thus when he goes to the saloon to ask for help, he takes a pile of badges with him. He is not simply seeking help against Miller, but to strengthen the forces of the law against the trouble he foresees. Although Kane is a lawman, no law commanded him to be so. Nor did any law command him to come back to Hadleyville, nor does it command “volunteers.”8 Government by law is not an alternative to government by men, for law without will (and in this case Will Kane) is unable to govern. Law is not self-sufficient, for it depends on a source outside itself for its own maintenance, and thus Kane must kill Frank Miller. But law also depends on an end outside itself for its justification. Kane is a good marshall not simply because he faced Hadleyville’s outlaws but because he has made the town fit for women and children. And the song points to this as well, for its singer wants neither to be a coward nor to lose his fair-haired beauty. Will’s attraction to Amy reveals his sense that the law (and the virtue and character that support it) is a means and that the life of peace is preferable to the life that enforces peace. But High Noon shows that both are necessary for a full human life. The story the movie tells presents a more complex picture of what is only outlined in the song—a complex picture of Kane as well as of the conflict that human beings face. Words of a song cannot capture that complexity as well as a story can. Similarly, a more complex “lesson in civics” is told by the judge’s deeds than the one he articulates to Kane—running is justified, he tells Kane, because Hadleyville is a dirty little village in the middle of nowhere, and nothing that happens there is important. The judge may have experienced in the words of Mart that “deep down, the people just don’t care.” But deep down the judge does care. He was instrumental in bringing order to Hadleyville by sentencing Frank Miller to hang. His own actions belie his pessimistic reading of history, and the civics reflected in his deeds qualifies the lesson in civics he spells out for Kane. The judge remained a judge even after he ran away. Unlike the judge, Will Kane will not run away out of fear. The judge will always be on the move. His misreading of history parallels his lack of courage. In spite of its demonstration of human virtue, High Noon is not entirely optimistic. What is the future of the town? And what is the future of Will and Amy? Will the future lives of both the town and its marshall not be diminished once they are parted? If the North hears that Hadleyville is still overrun by violence, it may not send needed financial support, as Jonas feared, and the town may decay. Of course what the North does depends on what it hears. And if it hears that violence has been put to rest in this last gunfight, the desired money may come, and statehood will follow. This is surely what the town seeks, just as Kane seeks a life with Amy, even if that means running a store. Church services will not have to be interrupted by news of the likes of Frank Miller, and saloons or their equivalents will no longer threaten the life of the town. Is such a life possible, however, without a Will Kane to sustain it? Are there not always friends of Frank Miller waiting for their opportunity? If residents of a town don’t protect the town how can they maintain their private lives? Must they not be willing when the town is threatened to be deputized at high noon? If Hadleyville has become dependent on Kane for its support—as suggested by the homonym of his last name—Kane may be an adequate lawman and still fail as a founder. If he made the town safe for the women and children, he made it too safe for the men. And in doing so he did not make it safe enough for anyone. Kane’s failure, however, was one not merely of means but also of ends. Even had he made the town safe for all, for example, would that have signaled success? Is the way of life fostered by such success as fully human as the way of life necessary to bring that success about? If making a town safe for women and children is like founding civil life, is the founding merely a means to the life it makes possible? Or might that act of founding be as important a component of human life as the way of life that is its goal? Perhaps when he drops his badge into the dirt, Kane acknowledges the inadequacy of the end that law serves, the peace and prosperity law makes possible, which he has attained for his town with the death of the outlaws. But without the goal, the means itself loses value, even if it does not lose all value. It is as clear as day that Hadleyville loses something when it loses Will Kane. But does Will Kane not also lose something when his badge falls into the dust and he rides off with his wife? Kane has clearly preserved his personal integrity in spite of the town and has gained his fair-haired beauty, but his service to the law was not in all ways a success. In High Noon we see little more than an hour and a half in the life of Will Kane. Events are haunted by the clock, as it approaches noon. From the moment the town hears what the noon train will bring, and the camera gives us a shot of the clock, the time the movie runs and the time the movie records is roughly the same. We live through that hour or so with the town and its marshall. The director thus reinforces the movie’s dramatic illusion, giving the impression that neither he nor we ourselves have any more time than do Kane and Hadleyville. High noon is ours. But high noon captures that in-between state represented by the territory itself: at high noon the lawless chaos and uncontained violence of the wilderness stands in balance with the law that restrains that violence. For Will Kane, by the same token, high noon makes his courage and integrity one with the law and community he serves. Even if Will and Amy do not look back as they ride away, the movie itself looks back as well as forward. It restores for us what Kane and Hadleyville lose when they lose each other, but what merges at high noon. It might do for us what Kane did not do for Hadleyville—give us Kane as our model and let us make founding part of our ordinary lives. The movie is a poetry that deputizes, for high noon always approaches. |
