High Noon

High Noon (1952)

9 quotes

(4 votes)

Movie Quote Quiz

Will: I've got to, that's the whole thing.

Judge: This is just a dirty little village in the middle of nowhere. Nothing that happens here is really important.

Amy: Don't try to be a hero! You don't have to be a hero, not for me.

Will: Stay at the hotel until it's over.
Amy: No, I won't be here when it's over. You're asking me to wait an hour to find out if I'm going to be a wife or a widow. I say it's too long to wait! I won't do it.
Will: Amy.
Amy: I mean it! If you won't go with me now, I'll be on that train when it leaves here.

Helen: What kind of woman are you? How can you leave him like this? Does the sound of guns frighten you that much?
Amy: I've heard guns. My father and my brother were killed by guns. They were on the right side but that didn't help them any when the shooting started. My brother was nineteen. I watched him die. That's when I became a Quaker. I don't care who's right or who's wrong. There's got to be some better way for people to live. Will knows how I feel about it.

Dr. Mahin, Minister: The commandments say 'Thou shalt not kill, ' but we hire men to go out and do it for us. The right and the wrong seem pretty clear here. But if you're asking me to tell my people to go out and kill and maybe get themselves killed, I'm sorry. I don't know what to say. I'm sorry.

Hotel Clerk: You're Mrs. Kane, ain't you?
Amy: Yes.
Hotel Clerk: You're leaving on the noon train?
Amy: Yes.
Hotel Clerk: But your husband ain't?
Amy: No, why?
Hotel Clerk: No reason, but it's mighty interesting. Now, me, I wouldn't leave this town at noon for all the tea in China. No, sir, it's going to be quite a sight to see.

Helen: You're a good-looking boy: you've big, broad shoulders. But he's a man. And it takes more than big, broad shoulders to make a man.

Helen: Kane will be a dead man in half an hour and nobody's gonna do anything about it. And when he dies, this town dies too. I can feel it. I am all alone in the world. I have to make a living. So I'm going someplace else. That's all.

Plot hole: Frank Miller sets fire to the stable Kane is hiding in; when he leaves it, you can see the large column of smoke. But the fire is ignored after that. In an age of wooden buildings and poor fire equipment, that could have burned down the whole town. Even assuming that people wouldn't come out to fight the fire during the gun battle, you'd think that when they all came out at the end, someone would have pointed out they had a major fire to deal with. (01:16:40)

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Trivia: Released during the height of Communist hysteria, the film is a thinly disguised indictment of McCarthyism. The cowardice of the townspeople represents the blacklisting that ruined careers and lives, particularly in Hollywood, all the while supposedly good people were afraid to do the right thing and stand up for those singled out for persecution.

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