Kino Lorber
Certain classic westerns are more than films, they are the archetypes for entire story tropes.
The formal basis for dozens of pastiches, parodies, and reinventions. These films enter into the cultural mythology of American film and if you go back and watch them for the first time now you’ll realize you’ve seen innumerable references to this film throughout the films and television of your youth and never knew it– essentially you were living with this movie for your entire life, without your knowledge.
High Noon is the definitive showdown movie; Rio Bravo is the definitive siege film; Red River is the cattle drive film and Stagecoach is…well, you can probably figure it out.
All of this is to say: Shane is the definitive “mysterious stranger” Western. It is the wellspring from which films like The Tin Star, The Man From Laramie, A Fistful of Dollars and Pale Rider all draw from.
Shane opens with the titular loner, played by Alan Ladd, riding across the Wyoming Territory. He happens upon the homestead of the Starrett Family: husband and patriarch Joe (Van Heflin), wife Marian (Jean Arthur) and young son Joey (Brandon deWilde). His stop off proves to be precipitous as the family comes under threat from a group of professional gunfighters sent by land baron Ryker (Emile Meyer) who is looking to force independent ranchers off the land to purchase it cheaply.
The gang instantly identifies Shane, a stranger to the territory, as a shootist and back off which causes Joe to extend Shane an offer to stay on and work the ranch with him. Shane, who seems taken by both Marian and young Joey, accepts. What follows is a slow boiling tension escalating between Ryker’s gang and the homesteaders which we know Shane will be drawn into eventually, even as he resists at all costs.
Alan Ladd plays Shane as the archetypical Western hero, perhaps even more primal than John Wayne’s legendary characters. Shane is well versed in violence, he’s stained by it and his wandering is an attempt to outrun the reputation that he’s cultivated with it. The villains push and push Shane, believing his humility to be cowardice or weakness rather than a deep knowledge of the finality of gun fighting and the sudden death that comes with it.
Shane the film and Shane the character are universal idealizations of a heroic man: honest, humble, forthright, polite, a man who can deal in violence but only on his terms and as a last resort. Bruce Lee’s debut film The Big Boss casts him in an almost identical role, and the Shaw Brothers’ classic Five Fingers of Death recreates whole scenes from this film, most notably the sequence where Shane enters the bar to get a soda pop for Joey and is bullied by a table of Ryker’s goons but refuses to take the bait, only to return later when the critical threshold has been passed and defeat them easily.
Shane is a very good film, just short of the other 50’s westerns mentioned in this review. It features absolutely incredible location work, great performances from Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, and Jack Palance and is well constructed.
That said, Shane is a great character in a good film and Shane retains a kind of old fashioned, cornball quality that films like Ride Lonesome, The Searchers, and The Man From Laramie do not. It is a 50’s Western for a lover of the genre, or someone interested in studio system era Hollywood, but it doesn’t rise to the heights of the others where you could show them to anyone and they could appreciate it.
Most of that is owed to the decision to showcase much of the film from the point of view of Brandon deWilde’s young Joey, who worships Shane from the moment he lays eyes upon him. This childlike enthusiasm coupled with how soft spoken and almost courtly Shane is, can give the impression of a more old fashioned and saccharine picture than Shane really was.
Still, Shane remains an American Western classic and worth seeing to anyone with an interest in the genre or the period.
In addition to a stunning remastered picture, extras include audio commentaries, and the theatrical trailer.
Recommended.
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