Chicken $hite Town
I'd have left and hope they burned it down.
shareI agree, let those scared sobs fend for themselves
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MovieChat Forums > High Noon (1952) Discussion > Chicken $hite Town
haha yah same here
sharethey were a bit cowardly
shareInterestingly, this is what prompted Howard Hawks and John Wayne to make Rio Bravo a few years later. And you'll notice in that film, that John Wayne's sheriff, John T. Chance, not only doesn't need to ask for help (several people offer him help in various forms), he actually refuses most of the offers for help that he gets as too dangerous to the people offering to let them get involved. Wayne and Hawks felt that a frontier town full of spineless cowards was both un-American and historically inaccurate.
I think they were actually right about that. When the James-Younger gang raided Northfield, Minnesota, or the Dalton gang raided Coffeyville, Kansas, the townsfolk in both places armed themselves and in both cases pretty much ended those gangs' careers.
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I wish that were true in the U.S. today. Most "men" feel the need to show everyone how far up the ass of international corporations they can lodge their noses.
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I'd have left and hope they burned it down.
I would have left too. Oddly, Gerald O'Hara had the right idea: have Kane leave town so there would be no trouble and have the next marshall take care of any problem in the future if the Miller gang made trouble. This wasn't like High Plains Drifter where the returning thugs were going to take revenge on the town in general - the Miller and his thugs only wanted Kane.
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EVERYBODY wants Kane!
We Kane men piss other men off.
Women, not so much.
Seriously: I was real little when this movie was a big deal. I am grateful for the posts here. Even as. child, I felt bad energy around High Noon. I’m happy to learn that Duke Wayne felt the need to balance the scales.
The town may have been okay, but that doesn't mean Kane would have been. There is nothing to indicate the Miller gang would have just forgotten about him if he had left town when they arrived. He knew he would always be looking over his shoulder until he confronted them.
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Agree, but wouldn't Kane be smarter by making the odds more in his favor? Fighting the Miller gang alone at that time and place wasn't smart - better retire and fight when the field is more level. If his pacifist Morman wife didn't shoot someone in the back, he'd probably have been killed.
But here is the issue --- as the mayor said, Miller really wants revenge on Kane only. Miller doesn't have a grudge against anyone else in that town. Infact, some of the people in that town were associates of Miller (e.g. the saloon).
If Kane had just left, the town would have been fine; there wouldn't have been a shootout if Kane wasn't there. Why, therefore, should the town fight Miller when Miller doesn't intend to harm them? Kane stayed only because he felt it was the sheriff-ly thing to do. Kane wasn't protecting them.
The only viable argument is that the town owes Kane, as Kane was an excellent sheriff for a while.
I would like all the people who are calling the townsfolk "chicken shite" and "cowards" to tell us all about the time they voluntarily signed up for an extended shootout when the odds were against you, and you didn't have any Kevlar armor or any advanced medical care available.
Well, I haven't, and I wouldn't. I'd be telling Kane to get his ass out of town and let the gunslingers follow him, if he wants to fight them then that's his business. But if he wants to host a shootout, do it away from my home.
Today, people are even too cowardly to take on gangs of idiots on social media.
shareThey could have simply barricaded themselves inside a building.
shareUh, weren't most of the buildings in the town made of wooden planks? I mean it's been a while since I've seen the movie, but that's always what Hollywood used for Oater town sets.
I wouldn't bring it up, except I don't think that flimsy wooden buildings are bulletproof.
I wouldn't bring it up, except I don't think that flimsy wooden buildings are bulletproof.
Or fireproof..
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