A dominant motif in the mosaic of Hollywood movies is the struggle of the individual to assert his or her will over the resistance of the collective majority. Or as film scholar Howard Suber wrote recently in the online Huffington Post, “What American movies are selling is the Unstated State Religion of America: individualism — the belief that the most important power lies within each person.”
There is a problem with this, of course, in that the collective itself is the sum total of other individuals, presumably each with their own “important power” that deserves and demands recognition. It is this paradox that gives the best films their dramatic tension, according to Suber, for “no memorable popular American film gives us a protagonist who is only concerned with himself throughout the film.”
I was reminded of this paradox last week as I sat in my basement in a bid to escape the sweltering heat. To pass the time, I’d dug through a box of old DVDs and, almost at random, selected two classics from the ’50s — High Noon (1952) and 12 Angry Men (1957).
Each movie pivots on the efforts of the protagonist to prevail over collective indifference, resistance and even hostility. Famously, each man eventually succeeds: Marshal Will Kane (played by Gary Cooper) faces and guns down his rival Frank Miller after the town of Hadleyville refuses to come to his assistance; juror No. 8 (played by Henry Fonda) stands alone in insisting there is reason to doubt the guilt of a teenage boy accused of murdering his father and compels his fellow jurymen to reconsider and ultimately reverse their original “guilty” votes.
This, at least, was how I’d remembered each film, and is more or less how they have entered the pantheon of “Great American Movies.” Indeed, Fonda’s juror was voted by the American Film Institute as the 28th greatest movie hero; Cooper as Marshal Kane did even better, coming in at No. 5.
In addition to their celebration of individualism, the two films are also linked by their focus on the American justice system. In its claustrophobic portrayal of a jury at work and at odds with each other, 12 Angry Men reveals the degree to which subjective bias and prejudice can shape the apparently objective process of rendering a verdict.
High Noon, on the other hand, picks up where the system breaks down. On the day that Will Kane marries his young bride, Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), and hands in his badge to start a new life, he receives word that Miller — whom he had originally arrested and helped convict of murder — has received a pardon on a technicality and will arrive in Hadleyville on the noon train. The choice now facing Kane is simple: run or stay and fight.
As I sat watching these films, I became increasingly aware that there seemed to be something wrong — or at least missing — from High Noon and 12 Angry Men. In the case of the latter, Fonda is popularly remembered for “winning over” the other jurors to his point of view (i.e. the innocence of the accused), but in the film itself, this is precisely what does not happen. “Do you think he’s innocent?” Fonda is asked at one point. “I don’t know,” he replies. “I just want to talk…. I’m not trying to change your mind, it’s just that we’re talking about somebody’s life here. We can’t decide it in five minutes. Suppose we’re wrong?”
Indeed, whether the accused teen is guilty or innocent is almost irrelevant. What matters is that the 12 men come to a decision by the right means; that is, by considering critically and sceptically the evidence before them. Although Fonda might act as the catalyst in this process, significantly, it is other members of the jury who take up the task until, finally, a new consensus of reasonable doubt has been formed.
In High Noon, Kane elects to stay and fight Miller, even though he is officially no longer marshal and has no civic duty to fulfil. He reaches this decision against the urgings of his new wife — a Quaker — and counsel of his friends. “They’re making me run,” he says. “I’ve never run from anyone before.”
Beyond this schoolyard bravado, we are given no more reason for Kane’s decision. As the film runs on, it becomes clear that virtually the entire town would rather he leave. His friends fear for his safety. Hotel and saloon owners resent the trade they have lost ever since Kane cleaned up Hadleyville, while other businessmen fear the damage a public gunfight would do to the town’s reputation. Even his pacifist wife deserts him, opting to take the same train out of town that will bring in the vengeful Miller.
Yet if an increasingly taciturn Kane reveals nothing of his motives for staying, perhaps this too is irrelevant. For in the end, it is not right but might that determines events. In the final showdown, Kane shoots and kills two of the four gang-members. A third is shot in the back by Amy, who has returned just in time to abandon her own Quaker principles it seems, and the newlyweds combine their efforts to gun down Frank Miller himself.
All this is to say that there is little in either movie that “sells” individualism as such. Fonda’s character may be right to resist the collective will to convict, but there is a danger in doing so. “Suppose you talk us all out of this,” one co-juror warns, “and the kid really did knife his father.”
In the same way, the fact that Kane ultimately survives does not mean that his original decision to ignore the town’s collective advice to flee rather than fight was correct. An individual’s motivation and action gain meaning only by being considered in the context of the greater collective. Or as Kane’s wife puts it more eloquently, “I don’t care who’s right and who’s wrong. There’s got to be a better way for people to live.”