High Noon (1952)

I don't believe for a second that John Wayne was smart enough to recognize this movie as an attack on McCarthyism. He praised the film when he accepted Gary Cooper's Oscar for him. I think someone told him later that it was an allegory and he started calling it "un-American". 

Grace Kelly involving herself in the action was the movie's most uplifting moment, but that was one of things that got the McCarthyites' panties into the biggest wad.

Gary Cooper had better reason to stay and fight than I remembered. The age difference between him and Grace Kelly was more pronounced than I realized. I wrote on here recently that Cooper leaves town in the end with an untreated gunshot wound, which was technically correct, but I see now that it was far less serious than I remembered. The bullet just grazed him. I would go to the emergency room if it happened to me, but his shirt bore the brunt of it.

Lloyd Bridges shouldn't have started a fist fight with Gary Cooper just before the big finale, just when he needed to be at the top of his game. Van Heflin did the same thing to Alan Ladd in Shane a year later. There's probably some logic there, something to do with pacing or something.