High Noon High Noon High Noon is a 1952 American Western film produced by Stanley Kramer from a screenplay by Carl Foreman, directed by Fred Zinnemann, and starring Gary Cooper. The plot, depicted in real time, centers around a town marshal who is torn between his sense of duty and love for his new bride and who must face a gang of killers alone. Though mired in controversy with political overtones at the time of its release, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four (Actor, Editing, Music-Score, and Music-Song) as well as four Golden Globe Awards (Actor, Supporting
Fred Zinnemann with the moral dilemmas of his characters. His philosophy about directing influenced director Alan Parker: In "From Here to Eternity", for example, he effectively added actual newsreel footage of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which enhanced and dramatized the story. Similarly, in "A Hatful of Rain", he used a documentary style to present real life drug addiction in New York. Zinnemann again incorporated newsreel footage in "Behold a Pale Horse", about the Spanish Civil War. "The Day of the Jackal", a political thriller about an attempt to assassinate Charles de Gaulle, was shot on location in newsreel style, while