High Noon Film Analysis

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The Western film has been around for about as long as film itself, and with it, racist stereotypes about Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Let Katie Do It and Martyrs of the Alamo, both made in the year 1915, have “depictions of Mexicans as lazy “greasers” and “banditios,” fiendish sex and dope addicts” (Williams 214). Male Mexican characters served as “foils in countless westerns to flatter the intelligence and energy of the Anglo cowboy” (Williams 214). For this installment of the film series, we’ll be viewing High Noon, released in 1952, in which we find a Chicana woman set as the foil to a Town Marshal’s white wife in the old west.

In High Noon, the character Helen Ramirez, played by Mexican and American film star Katy Jurado, finds an intersection between the ostracized other and the “moral force” Latina character that flooded the screens later on in the 1970’s (Cortés 134). Helen, supposedly married but sexually …show more content…
Because she once had a romantic/sexual relationship with Kane, whom Amy has just married, Helen is seen as competition for the love of the Anglo hero, and her frowned-upon sexual activity makes it so that Amy and Kane’s “love story is highly sentimentalized” by comparison (Modleski 331). Amy, played by Grace Kelly, is first seen onscreen as a virginal bride on her wedding day. She is naïve and innocent, and we soon learn she is a Quaker. To contrast, Helen is knowing and wise, and is first seen onscreen in a dressing gown, after having had sex with Kane’s deputy. When she is fully dressed, her darker clothes bring out her black hair, a juxtaposition to Amy’s almost glowing whiteness. While Helen is a very likeable character, we are clearly meant to view Amy as virtuous and Helen as shameful, and this stems from, as Helen puts it, her being “a Mexican woman in a town like this”

High Noon Film Analysis

High Noon film notes Jesse Secrest “High Noon” is a western released in 1952 and it was produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Fred Zinnemann. The film stars Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, among other actors. According to IMDB, it was a highly awarded film, winning four Oscars, including Best Actor, and four Golden Globe Awards. It was also preserved in the United States National Film Registry in 1989, when the registry was first formed. Gary Cooper plays Marshal Will Kane, who is hanging…

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Fred Zinnemann High Noon Film Analysis

High Noon, is a film made by Fred Zinnemann. In 1952, staring Gary Cooper as Marshal Will Kane. A rough and tough sheriff that just had retired to marry his wife. Amy Fowler Kane played by Grace Kelly. As they retreat to the country side for their honeymoon. But they find out that some criminals that have a grudge with Marshal Kane. He races back to save all the towns people from certain doom. High Noon does pacing and tension very well it keep the audience on the edge of their seats. With the…

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