American society in the 1950s cannot be defined in simple terms: it pursued social stabilization and a new progress at the same time after the wars. Especially the Cold War "Red Scare" brought new right-wing conservatism to the society and it soon affected the Hollywood film industry as well as other areas of the society. The turmoil of McCarthyism relentlessly disturbed the camaraderie and dignity of the artists in the industry, stigmatizing some as "traitors" while blacklisting others as "Communists." The films High Noon (1952, Dir. Fred Zinnemann) and On the Waterfront (1954, Dir. Elia Kazan) are regarded as two allegorical works dealing with the painful intolerance of this era. The writer of High Noon, Carl Foreman, was blacklisted whereas the director of On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan, became the archenemy of his colleagues after their experiences at the HUAC hearings respectively. They reflected the real stories in each film, thus purporting to send different messages toward the society. This paper, however, finds similarities between these two seemingly contradictory films especially in their mixed use of the conventions of the Western genre and newly emerging realist aesthetics at that time. Using the stylized elements of the genre, the realistic visages and career histories of the actors, the claustrophobic spatial structures, and more importantly actively responding to the traditional and idealized American masculine heroes on screen, these two films acutely comment on 1950s American society in their hybrid forms.