A Tale of Two Cities: Hadleyville and Big Whiskey

From real life to the cinematic, violence has permeated our every day. One film genre in particular, the western, has had violence as a staple from the very beginning.   

Evolving over the years from a clinically-clean old west to a nitty-gritty west of modern culture, popular tastes and historical events have dictated how violence is depicted in this genre. 

A look at a classical western and a look at a revisionist western will illustrate this evolution. High Noon, released in 1952, is an example of a classical western, in which violence was as clean as the cowboys’ shirts and the protagonists were noble to a fault. 

In contrast to the classical western we have the revisionist westerns, like Unforgiven, which seek to shed new light on the western and take a fresh look at the genre. With this fresh look, came a new take on violence and a new take on ‘the hero’. 

Eastwood's grittier western 'hero'

Compared to High Noon, Unforgiven, released in 1992, takes a drastically different approach to violence and its depiction.  This polarized shift is not only shown in the films plots and character development, but in their camera work and use of sound.

            

Films, like any art form, do not stand devoid of time and space; they very much exist within a certain time and place, along within the culture they came from.  This frame of mind will help us to better understand High Noon. The era High Noon was released was a time of newly found peace and prosperity. The great depression was behind us, as was WWII, and the baby boom was well on its way. 

They were happy days for our country; looked back fondly on by numerous films and TV shows, showing a content population who knew where they and their country stood in this world. Even during something as horrible as a Second World War, we still had a clear definition of whom the enemy was and why we were fighting. America had a noble cause to go to war.  

This is the very sentiment that is shown in High Noon. The marshal, Will Kane, like America during these times, was the clear cut, quintessential good guy with clear cut bad guys to fight. With little mention of the back story of Frank Miller, the ruthless killer that plagued the city of Hadleyville, there is no way for the audience to relate to him and possibly feel sympathy toward him. Kane is meant to be nothing but noble.

This nobility never falters during the course of the film, even during his acts of violence. The first act of violence we see during the film is Kane punching the man in the bar, with one clean, swift punch. No blood, no mess, nothing but a sore jaw. Kane even has the decency to try to help the guy to his feet. In fact the only use of blood in the film occurs on Kane’s face after he gets in a fight with his former deputy in the barn, knocking him out but still having the decency to help him wake up.

Quick and clean

The deaths in High Noon were extremely clean cut and swift. Frank Miller’s posse fell like metal ducks at the carnival; their deaths being nothing more than an inevitability. Even the death of Frank Miller was quick and clean, only taking a bit longer because he took Kane’s wife as a hostage.

These depictions of violence stand in stark contrast to the much more intense and graphic violence of Unforgiven. As opposed to the deaths in Hadleyville, the deaths in the town of Big Whiskey were much more prolonged, with much more attention given to them.  Death becomes a bigger part of the myth of the west. 

If you look at the death of the first cowboy in Unforgiven, he gets shot in the stomach, and suffers an agonizing death. The depiction of this death is extremely impactful in both its camerawork and use of sound. This spilling of innocent blood was given great attention with the close-ups and medium shots of Davy and his gut wound, along with his cries for help echoing off the canyon walls. The camera was placed on his level as we were not meant to look down on him and feel some detached sense of pity, but instead we were meant to experience his death on his level.   

The deaths in High Noon were mostly shot from far away, leaving us to remain detached from the killings. So much so, that as the gunfight reaches its crescendo, it is hard to keep track of exactly who is getting killed. As for sound, the only sound during the killing is gunshots, no cries for help from the slain.  

As to why the depiction of violence is so much more graphic in a revisionist western we must again look at history for the answer. Like the classical westerns, revisionist westerns came during a time of war, the only difference being that now wars are broadcasted every night into our living rooms. A trend that started with the Vietnam War that continues to this day.  

 This bombardment of death and violence will naturally wind its way into popular culture and our films. I feel that this is the reason why the depiction of violence has gone through such dramatic shift over time. We as a culture have become desensitized to the violence and the changing nature of war has caused our sense of right and wrong to become blurred. 

We went from the no-doubt-about-it Will Kane-esque good guys in the fight, to still doing right but not necessarily in the ‘right’ way, Will Munny-esque character.  On the surface our intentions may seem merely monetary to most, but if you look a little deeper there is still a sense of wanting to bring justice to those that have been wronged. 

It is only natural that the film genre that is so quintessentially American would follow that same evolution that American culture has gone through.