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The high noon of the Western motion picture
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Right, here’s the situation: you are on a sinking ship with a full cargo of DVDs and about to be marooned on a desert island. You have grabbed your solar-powered DVD player and monitor. You only have space for a dozen Westerns. What are you going to seize?
Well, this movie would be among them and could be the very first one to snatch.
So much has been written about High Noon that I hesitate to add to it, but on the other hand what would a Western blog be without comments on one of the greatest Western movies of all time? So here is what I will add to the discussion:
Coop
First, Gary Cooper (Will Kane) was the best of all the many Western movie stars (I think so, anyway) and in this film he was in his prime. 50 years old, he had lost that gawky youthfulness; he had even perhaps lost some of his beauty (for he was a beautiful man). But he had attained maturity and had gained experience and in the 1950s he had become a ruggedly handsome man with astonishing power as an actor.
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Gary Cooper. Magisterial.
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He always had power, even as a youth. The economy of his acting is miraculous. It’s all done with the eyes. You can just see what he is thinking. He won an Oscar for High Noon, justly. Even Gregory Peck or Henry Fonda (who would both have been good) could not have done it better than Coop. In fact it is said that Peck was producer Stanley Kramer’s first choice, but having recently (well, in 1950) done The Gunfighter, Peck didn’t want to get in a Western rut (foolish fellow). Other prospective candidates included Kirk Douglas and (the mind boggles) Marlon Brando. But I’m glad these faded away. We got Coop. He did it (despite a stomach ulcer and a bad hip) for $60,000 and a percentage of the profits.
A thriller
Second, the movie is a tense thriller with a gripping plot set almost in real time – the first clock we see says 10.33 and the story finishes at about twelve-fifteen, so almost the same number of minutes has elapsed as the running time of the film.
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Tick, tick…
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A thriller, yes, but it also deals with important themes such as loyalty, courage, honor, non-violence and self-respect. And like all good thrillers, you can see it again and again and still be thrilled.
The cast
Next, Coop’s fellow actors are outstanding.
Katy Jurado (as Helen Ramirez, in her first major Hollywood role) is absolutely splendid. She was a graceful and voluptuous woman and an actor capable of subtlety and nuance as well as power. It was a great part and wonderfully well done. At a time when women were stereotypes in Westerns – saintly homesteaders, prim schoolma’ams or saloon prostitutes – Jurado suddenly provided a different kind of woman, a person who had made her own way in the world and achieved if not total ‘respectability’ (she was a saloon owner, after all) then at least a status in the community and an independence. Despite the fact that she has been the mistress of the badman Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), the marshal (Cooper) and now the deputy (Lloyd Bridges), she exudes a decency and pride that allow of no sneers or innuendo. The way she silences an incipient inappropriate question from the choir-singing storekeeper with a jut of her chin is magnificent. She carries herself like a lady, she is her own woman and she is the one with the courage and fortitude to tell Kane’s prissy, rather wet Quaker bride, “If Kane was my man, I’d never leave him like this.” On the set, as Katy Jurado deployed her usual way of looking directly, penetratingly into a person’s eyes as she spoke, Grace Kelly wilted under the ‘glare’ and fluffed her lines several times.
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Jurado and Bridges, both outstanding
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Apparently, on the set Jurado had a cool relationship with Grace Kelly (Amy, the pacifist new wife of the marshal), a woman who, according to Katy, appeared weak as a way of manipulating men (quite the opposite of Jurado’s approach!) and this was in fact ideal because it introduced an iciness between the two women into the movie. Jurado, the passionate, sultry Latin mistress in a dark dress confronted the very pale, overly demure prim-and-proper wife in white. As they ride in the buckboard to the railroad station together, each for her own reasons having decided to leave town on the same noon train that Frank Miller is coming in on, the two women could not be more different. No prizes for which of them comes across as the more impressive!
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Kelly, weak link
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Kelly seems rather wooden, if beautiful in a glacial way, and is probably the weakest actor present. She was so unimpressed with her own performance on seeing the final cut that she immediately signed up to acting classes in New York. And yet in a way she was ideal in the role, making her undoubted moral principles seem like disloyalty and stubbornness.
Lloyd Bridges (as Harvey Pell, the deputy) is brilliant. Fractious, impatient, jealous, rather too big for his boots, he is bitter at not being nominated the new marshal on the departure of Kane. Helen Ramirez knows full well that he is really still just a boy and needs to grow up first. It’s a superb performance by Bridges, who was a first class Western actor. He’d started as ‘Uniformed soldier (uncredited)’ in the plodding Northwest Passage in 1940 and had followed that with bit parts in a dozen or so low-budget Westerns in the early 40s. But by the Randolph Scott oater Abilene Town in 1946, Canyon Passage the same year and Ramrod in ‘47 (all classy films) he was starting to get bigger parts, and starting to impress. He’d acted with Coop in the proto-Western Unconquered in 1947 and had received his first leading role in a Western in the excellent and underrated Little Big Horn in 1951, where he played a grizzled Army officer – yet was able, the year after, in High Noon, to play a petulant boy. High class acting.
As for the bad guys, they are a top-class bunch. Their boss, the released jailbird Frank Miller who is now coming into town on the noon train to kill the lawman who put him away, is Ian McDonald. Like Coop a Montanan, McDonald had, like Bridges, put in his time in bit parts in minor Westerns through the 40s but had then secured roles in pictures of of the caliber of Ramrod, Pursued and The Man from Colorado in the late 40s, and, in 1950, and appropriately, in Montana with Errol Flynn. He doesn’t have a big part in High Noon but in a way he does because he is constantly talked about and his anticipated arrival is the key to the movie.
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Boss of the badmen, Ian McDonald as Frank Miller
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His henchmen, waiting for him vulture-like at the depot, are superb: Sheb Wooley, Lee Van Cleef and Robert J Wilke. Wooley not so much – he was then a country singer who dabbled in Westerns (sound familiar?) but Van Cleef and Wilke were classic baddies, about as good, I mean bad, as you are going to get. According to author Howard Hughes in his 2008 guide to Westerns Stagecoach to Tombstone, Kramer wanted Van Cleef for the part of Kane’s deputy, having seen him on stage in Mister Roberts, but he insisted the actor have cosmetic surgery on his beaky nose, and when Van Cleef refused, Kramer cast him as a heavy instead, and Lloyd Bridges became Harvey Pell.
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Great photograph of henchmen Van Cleef, Wilke, Wooley
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Then of course there are all the frightened townsfolk. Thomas Mitchell got second billing, though his part was pretty modest as the mayor who appears to back the marshal yet in fact metaphorically stabs him in the back. Otto Kruger is excellent as the cynical judge packing his saddlebags, and Harry Morgan very good as the townsman who hides behind his wife’s skirts (Mildred Fuller, very well done) to avoid being deputized. Especially moving is Lon Chaney as the marshal’s predecessor, now racked by arthritis and unable to hold a gun. Morgan Farley is the minister who squirms around trying to reconcile his religion, status in the town and fear.
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Pro-Frank Miller in the saloon
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Let’s not forget the smaller parts. I thought Howard Chamberlain superb as the slimy hotel clerk and of course who should the town drunk be but Jack Elam! Great. James Millican is an uncredited deputy. Lee Aaker (the lad from Rin Tin Tin) is the boy. He was actually a very good actor. If you look carefully you can spot among the uncredited townspeople the likes of John Doucette, Harry Harvey and Syd Saylor.
So much for the (excellent) cast.
The score
Then, the famous music, what you might call ‘Orchestral Variations on a Cheesy Tex Ritter Song’ by Dimitri Tiomkin, also Oscar-winning. It is haunting and beautiful.
The cinematography
Another outstanding aspect of the film is the fine Floyd Crosby photography. The flat light and bright, white, glaring skies, the low-angle shots and sharp cuts all emphasize the pitiless realism. He used no filters and deliberately went for a ‘documentary’ look. They even highlighted Kane’s dirt, sweat and bruises. It is visually stark. There was flat lighting also for Cooper, to highlight, not smoothen his wrinkled, haggard face. The close-ups of the principals’ faces at two minutes to twelve are quite stunning. We see in their expressions all the different reasons why they have not stood by Kane. And we see the gloating anticipation of those looking forward to Kane’s death.
Producer, director, writer
Together and in only 32 days, producer Stanley Kramer, director Fred Zinnemann, and scriptwriter/producer/partner Carl Foreman (who when told of the similarity of his plot to John Cunningham’s story The Tin Star, bought the rights to the story for $25,000) and cameraman Floyd Crosby, all on a budget of $750,000 (what a Republic Western of twelve years previously cost), enabled these excellent actors to perform a simple, moving tragedy of huge power.
Foreman was hardly a Western specialist: he had co-written the turgid Dakota in 1945 and would later do the frankly pretty dire Mackenna’s Gold, so his Western rep rests on High Noon. Good enough.
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Zinnemann, Kramer, Foreman, artists all
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Allegory
Of course it was a statement of America’s pusillanimous refusal to stand up to McCarthyism, and Carl Foreman was blacklisted by HUAC shortly afterwards and fled to England. Floyd Crosby and Lloyd Bridges were ‘graylisted’. John Wayne (then President of the MPA) was convinced that the movie was anti-American and thought the famous scene of the lawman throwing the star of office in the dust unpatriotic. Howard Hawks thought so too. Doh. Hadleyville, New Mexico was suspiciously close to Mark Twain’s corrupted Hadleyburg.
Reaction
When it came out, the movie did receive some criticism from traditional audiences of cowboy films who expected more chases, and the big outdoors. High Noon seemed too intense, too static, too talky, more like a theater play. You would have thought that the fight in the stable and the final shoot-out would have satisfied them but they didn’t really ‘get’ the power of the film. Others did, though, and even right-wingers like Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan greatly admired the movie. Some of the critics of the time were enthusiastic. The New York Times review said that every so often “somebody of talent and taste, with a full appreciation of legend and a strong trace of poetry in their soul—scoops up a handful of clichés from the vast lore of Western films and turns them into a thrilling and inspiring work of art.” True.
The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Writing/Screenplay. It won Oscars for Gary Cooper as Best Actor and also for Best Editing (Elmo Williams and Harry W Gerstad) and for Dimitri Tiomkin’s music – and in fact for Ned Washington and Tex Ritter and their ballad. Katy Jurado, who ought to have won an Oscar, won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
High Noon has had a lasting impact. Solidarność used it in Poland and Lech Walesa wrote, “Cowboys in Western clothes had become a powerful symbol for Poles. Cowboys fight for justice, fight against evil, and fight for freedom, both physical and spiritual. Solidarity trounced the Communists in that election, paving the way for a democratic government in Poland. It is always so touching when people bring this poster up to me to autograph it. They have cherished it for so many years and it has become the emblem of the battle that we all fought together.”
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Symbol of Solidarność
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The phrase high noon has a redolence in English that it may lack in other languages, where it simply means 12 o’clock. The German title Zwölf Uhr Mittags just means 12 o’clock midday, for example, which was a tad prosaic. In Italy they pepped it up by calling it Mezzogiorno di Fuoco, a noon of fire (enabling them to release Mel Brooks’s later comedy as A Twelve-Thirty of Fire). The French dumped the whole noon concept and called it Le Train Sifflera Trois Fois (the train will whistle three times) and Spanish-speaking folk called it Solo Ante el Peligro (alone in the presence of danger).
But whatever you call it, High Noon is in some ways the definitive Western. The British Film Institute voted it the best Western ever made, and those Institute chappies may not be wrong.
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Does it remind you of the famous walk-down in The Virginian?
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33 Responses
Great write-up. BTW, Lee Aaker was considered for the role of Jeff Miller in 'Lassie,' right after he returned from shooting 'Hondo' in Mexico with John Wayne. He was apparently relieved when passed over by the Wrathers because he was physically worn out from the Mexico shoot. The role of Jeff eventually went to the excellent Tommy Rettig, while Aaker was soon snapped up for the role of Rusty in TV's 'The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin.'
I always mix up the kids from Rin Tin Tin and Lassie! But Aaker is great in Hondo. So many child actors came across as whiney, not surprisingly as you can't expect children of that age to be great actors. I thought Shane was seriously weakened by De Wilde's performance. But every now and then you get one who seems natural.
Hi Jeff. This is the second 'anonymous' from the Northwest Passage comments. I still don't get the 'URL' business or any of the others so I suppose I'm going to have to stay anonymous for the time being. I think Dimitri Tiomkin's music deserves a bit more than you gave it. I like his music a lot especially the big rumbling ooomphs that come up often for no real reason and the dum-diddle-ump-diddle-umps that come in when somebody is just walking along a corridor in Rio Bravo. And when the train goes up the mountain in Night Passage absolutely wonderful. But I think some of his less obvious but best writing is in High. In particular the buggy ride. It's more than a set of variations on the theme song. As the ride goes on Tiomkin distorts and breaks up the theme so it becomes the musical depiction of the turmoil going on in Kane's mind until he stops the buggy and says "It's no good". It's perfect. The other perfect moment is when Kane steps out the door into the lonely street. It's Cooper's acting, it's the crane shot but it's also Tiomkin's music brings out the loneliness and the heroism of the moment.
Hi there
It's a good point. I think the music of HN does suffer a bit from the famous cheesy ballad, which is often the only bit people remember, but you are right, some of the other music is superb.
Jeff
About High Noon becoming an allegory of the post war period and atmosphere in the US due to HUAC activities may I recommand "High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic" by Glenn Frankel who has also written an excellent and exciting book about The Searchers a few years ago. JM aka an other anonymous who is not an expert in url business…
Thanks for the tip.
Jeff
I’ve just re-watched “High Noon” (1952, 5 stars)–WOW ! ! ! It’s a powerful movie–it’s definitely one of the best Westerns, and I’m glad Jeff overcame his intital hesitation to review it. When you love a movie, and you’re a writer, you should write about it.
When Jeff listed his Top 17 Westerns–after James requested a Top 10–“High Noon” was the first one on the list.
I believe John Wayne was wrong about “High Noon” being un-American. “High Noon” is a movie about being human. It’s a profound study of cowardice and courage.
While not on a level with Christ, Will Kane stands for what’s right when nobody else stands with him, just as Jesus Christ did.
When I first got seriously into movies in 2015, “High Noon” was one of the first ones I watched. (My father gave it to me for my birthday in 2009.) It only gets better upon each viewing, and I’d love to find a place for it in my Top 25 (of any genre).
I hadn’t seen it for quite a while and was lucky to see it on the wide screen of Institut Lumière in Lyon today. I could talk of it for hours.
Beside of its universal message about human nature, law and order, violence, justice and revenge, courage and cowardice, selfishness and togethernes, religion or atheism, straightforwardness and lie, individual and collective responsibility, pride and self respect, love and hate, good and evil, etc. (Yes we can get all that in many westerns but never so well and powerfully expressed all at once), beyond its splendid acting, casting, editing, photo, score and song etc., each new vision is an opportunity to (re-)discover little details as there is so much to pay attention from the first close up on Lee Van Cleef, the suspense increasing with clocks everywhere tiktaking endlessly up to one of the best gun fights ever
For instance the little poster on Kane’s office wall by the door “The war is declared”. Is it an old Civil War poster forgotten on the wall or could it be the war against Spain (1898) !?
The Mazeppa (the Tchaïkovski opera !?) poster in the street I quickly spotted during the showdown is also intriguing but it shows the sophistication the town has reached (thanks to Kane).
Or why does the judge fold the US flag before fleeing with it ?
The so called store owned by Kathy Jurado is in fact the saloon as we can see the sign Ramirez Saloon above its doors…
Quite insignificant remarks or questions for such a masterpiece isnt’it !?
It is a timeless classic that does not age, that cannot age, simply one of the greatest and finest films ever made for all the reasons so brilliantly exposed by Jeff.
I believe its an older Civil War poster from my study of it.
About that Mazeppa poster–it wouldn’t have been for the Tchaikovsky opera (which alas has never had much of a presence outside Russia). What Mazeppa was best-known for in the 19th century wasn’t the Ukrainian revolt that’s the subject of the opera, but an episode in his dissolute youth in which he had an affair with a married noblewoman of which the outraged husband had him stripped and bound to a galloping horse.. Byron wrote a narrative poem about it, from which Mazeppa’s wild ride entered popular culture as a symbol of the indomitable spirit, or something. Naturally, this devolved into the music halls, in which an actress playing Mazeppa as near to naked as the local authorities would allow would be strapped to a horse, and the wild ride reenacted. That would most probably be the act advertised in the Hadleyville opera house. (The association of Mazeppa with naked women persisted even into the 20th century: who can forget the musical Gypsy’s Mazeppa and her “revolution in dance”?)
By the way, I discovered this site early this year and am really enjoying learning so much about my favorite non-comic movie genre.
I had also thought of the Byron’s poem he had written about 60 to 70 years before Tchaïkovski (both inspired by the same ukrainian legend). And you are surely right since it corresponds to the time of the action written in the script (1870-75). But I did not know that the poem had been adapted to seduce the viewers that much… The image disappears very quickly and the viewer is absorbed by the gunfight.
I will try to look after a DVD and stop the image to read the details of the poster…
Since yesterday, I have found that there was also a Mazeppa tone poem for orchestra by Franz Liszt inspired by the French version of Lord Byron’s poem made by Victor Hugo. It was given its premiere in Weimar in 1854. So Mazeppa was a big hit all the 19th century long…
I have discovered that in the original script there is a scene where Kane (still called Doane. The name was changed because Kathy Jurado had a hard time pronouncing it correctly) is thinking of killing himself…
This film remains absolutely inexhaustible…!
When I opened the blog this chilly morning, I admittedly was not expecting to read about an obscure entry in Tchaikovsky’s generally unloved operatic oeuvre, nor about the poetry of Lord Byron. Yet another pleasant surprise from the JAW community.
The western world is always full of surprise. Beside of the harsh, violent, brutal and cruel, full of sound and fury daily life, the West could sometimes had its moments of grace and culture. Lilian Gish playing the piano (a Mozart piece) in The Unforgiven is one of my favorite western scenes.
Great movie still. Recently watched the new 4K restoration and it looks totally spectacular. Wonderful work as it brings everything out just more. All the great actors and their vivid work is alive once more on this timeless tale.
Always great to read regular correspondents when they’re in the mood to really appreciate a movie. And how wonderful to have got the chance to see it on the big screen, which I never have.
High Noon didn’t quite make the cut of my ‘best’ list a few weeks ago but I fully get why it did others’. Haven’t seen it in a while but many things stand out in the memory- the amazingly crisp cinematography, the razor-sharp editing, the perfectly concise performances, and as mentioned above the timelessness of the morality tale. Together with the perfect little details – the folding of the flag always stayed with me: so much meaning packed into a small moment without drawing attention to itself. But I’d never noticed the store actually being a saloon!
One objection I have heard from people who are not as sold on the movie as we all are is they have a problem with the basic narrative situation – Kane quickly changing his mind and returning back to town seems to them implausible, and foolish on his part (as the judge says to him, in the film). It never struck me that way, and besides if he’d stayed out of town we wouldn’t have this excellent movie at all! But there seem to be a fair few people out there who have a problem with it.
Reading both your comments puts me in mind to watch it again this weekend….
Hope you enjoy your next viewing. Coop is still legend, Grace is still swoon, Jurado is still angry, Lloyd is still spineless. Plus the direction is still aces. I felt the story living and breathing in my recent viewing.
I’ve truly enjoyed every minute of it!
Kane try to explain Amy once back in his office in Hadleyville that they do not have a single chance in open country against four men.
“They’ll just come after us. 4 of them, we will be all alone on the prairie, we will have to run as long as we live”.
At this moment he is still thinking he will be able to appoint some deputies. And it is easier to fight in the town he knows by heart (as we will see it at the end). Moreover he says after having stopped the buggy : “it is crazy. I haven’t even got any guns”. They left so much in a hurry. A good reason to come back finally isnt’it ?!
So it is not implausible or foolish on the contrary, Kane is a simple man, he was so much overwhelmed (too early to be really scared at this moment) that he did not take the time to really think of the situation, and coldly make up his mind, rushed by his friends.
The script found on internet says :
“The time is about 1870 or 1875”. So Chris you are definitely right about the war poster (probably a confederate one).
And interestingly about Hadleyville: “The place is Hadleyville, population about 400, located in a Western territory still to be determined, a town just old
enough to bave become pleasantly aware ot its existence, and to
begin thinking ot its appearance.”…
Some say here and there it is located in New Mexico (don’t know where does it come from) but I would rather lean to Texas (there is some acrimony against “the North” releasing Miller, pardoned by “them Northern politicians”…).
Or Kansas ?
Oklahoma is still a no man’s land in the 1870s and Pierce (Sheb Wooley) has been “DOWN in Abilene.” It could be Abilene, TX, or Abilene, KS, over 500 miles north (if it is not Texas) but this Abilene mention eliminates New Mexico.
We all agree on the great cast from Coop to any minor silhouette but I have to say that I do not agree with Jeff on Grace Kelly who is close too perfect. Yes she is (not always – and herself thought she was) wooden but at only 21 she matches her role at 100%. She is a virginal quaker !
She is exactly!
In Sunday School, (I go to Independent Presbyterian in Savannah), our assistant pastor taught on David and Goliath (I Samuel 17). David walked about the camp and told anybody who would listen that he wanted to fight the giant.
In the class discussion, I talked about “High Noon,” and how Frank Miller was coming to town, and Will Kane was going to fight him. Kane asked for help, and they laughed at him.
“High Noon” (1952, my #9 Western, totally makes my Top 25 of all time, all genres) has that message of courage–that constrast between courage and cowardice–a message that reaches the human heart.
There’s a universal appeal about “High Noon.” My father gave it to me for my birthday in 2009, and its a great movie with a timeless message.
That Sunday School discussion took place this morning.
I just watched “High Noon” last night, because you guys have been talking about it the last few days. WOW, what a movie ! ! ! !
Glad you enjoyed. Coop is just immense in the thing. Human nature is revealed in all its different shades.
The Miller come back is just the pretext to show the townsfolk’s reluctance to help Kane because of fearing Miller’s retaliation. Kane’s loneliness and abandonment feeling is enhanced by this crane shot just before the arrival of the train but his determination as well as the music gets along his march. That is a unique moment as the rest of the film is shot at street’s level until the end when the Kanes are leaving town.
I don’t know if Zinnemann was a storyboard’s adept (like Hitchcock draxing comic-like sketches) but each shot is carefully framed and beautifully built up like a work of art. I am thinking of the most strining such as the opening with Lee Van Cleef, the railroad tracks and of course Cooper’ s walking in the streets and portraits.
I have never thought of David when watching Gary Cooper…
Or McDonald as Goliath either!
High Noon is truly a life’s companion. Time has no grip on it.
Beautiful church by the way !
I really like what Dimitri Tiomkin does with the music during the ‘buggy ride’ sequence. As the ride goes on the ‘do not forsake me’ tune is increasingly pulled about to mirror Kane’s uneasiness with his decision until he pulls up ‘It’s no good’. Jean Francaix wrote ‘Symphony in G’ in 1953 in which he does something VERY similar in the first movement. The dates make me suspect there’s a connection.
The crane shot always blows me away – the look on Cooper’s face and then pulls back to show his complete isolation. There’s a shot in ‘This Happy Breed’ where a mother is going to get news that her child has been killed. Instead of watching it happen, the camera looks away – rather like Ward Bond in The Searchers. Both superb uses of the camera to make an emotional point.
This crane shot…! I read somewhere that Zinnemann borrowed the crane from his friend George Stevens.
Thanks ! ! ! The church was founded in 1755. A great deal of history there, but most importantly, we aim to glorify The Risen Savior.
That comment was in reply to Jean-Marie saying my home church (Independent Presbyterian) is a beautiful church.
And Jean-Marie is so right about time having no grip on “High Noon” (1952, my #9 Western, makes my Top 25 of all time, all genres).
I first saw it in 2009 (when my father gave me the DVD for my birthday), and while I wasn’t deeply into movies yet, I could easily see that it was an original–different from anything I’d ever seen. When I did get seriously into movies in 2015, “High Noon” was one of the first ones I watched.
A scroll down the “Best Westerns” post–what a FUN POST ! ! ! !–shows that almost everybody included “High Noon” on his list–Bud, Chris Evans, Thomas Leary, Jean-Marie, Paul, Nicholas Anes, and Yours Truly.
And RR says “High Noon” almost made his list. (We all have to draw the line somewhere. I understand.)
On top of that, when Jeff listed his Top 17 (at the request of James), “High Noon” was the first one he identified.
Man, I just might watch it again this week.
‘High Noon’ and Coop are always worth watching.
Savannah is such a lovely place… I wish to come back one day. I was glad to spot some glimpse if it in the recent Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2.
Yes, it is. ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil’ by Eastwood and ‘Gingerbread Man’ by Altman use the place well.
And Forrest Gump! More recently May December starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. But the closer to our genre, even if a Civil War movie is far from a western, would be Glory. The city stands for Boston for several sequences and Colonel Shaw (Matthew Broderick) home is the superb Mercer Williams house (used in The Garden of Good and Evil as well). The regiment parade is along River Street. Battlefield Park and the Roundhouse at the railroad museum were also used.
Yes, I was thinking too of ‘Glory’ in Savannah and the excellent use of it in the film.