Rent Shane (1953)

Classic movie - Shane review by KL

Old and no nonsense - what refreshing change.

The tale has been told in so many ways, but it seems this movie was the first.

I'd strangle the kid myself, but the relationship between the star and each of the family members suggests so much without needing to be obvious.

Ideas about violence, intimidation, resistance.. all for the seeing.

Classic & Important Western - Shane review by GI

One of the greatest westerns ever made and an important American film in its own right. Beautifully filmed mostly on location with the back drop of snowy mountains and constant storm tossed clouds. This is essentially a range war narrative with a big cattle baron attempting to chase away humble homesteaders who resist him. But thematically this is a film about the forging of community and in that sense it has a political and moral slant to it. Ultimately the need for violence to resolve matters is the climax of the story. The plot follows a relatively standard and classical story line of a land disrupted by powerful forces the people cannot resist until the arrival of the stranger who, by violence, restores the peace but cannot himself share in it. Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) is a small farmer living with his wife (Jean Arthur) and son (Brandon De Wilde). Along with other farmers they are harassed by Ryker (Emile Meyer) a rich cattle man who wants the farmers off the range. He uses intimidation and threats but Joe keeps the community together but it's beginning to crack. Then a stranger, Shane (Alan Ladd) rides out of the wilderness and finds some solace with Joe and his family. Ryker hires a ruthless gunfighter (Jack Palance) to start murdering the homesteaders but Shane is also a gunman and decides to stake all to protect the community. Ladd was a strange choice for the central role and this is probably his best film, he's not an actor that you'd think has the depth to play a western anti hero but it's difficult to think of anyone else playing it now and its interesting how the character maintains a mystery even at the end. Director George Stevens also amplified the gunfire to make it more realistic and the shootings are very realistic for the time and showed death by gunshot far more grittily than previously seen in films. Hugely influential on film makers such as Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah and Martin Scorsese this is a significant film and certainly one you should check out if it's somehow passed you by.

Classic Western. - Shane review by Steve

Crowd-pleasing, sentimental western which draws on the range wars between settlers and cowboys in 1890s Wyoming. This one takes the side of the farmers who are stampeded and burned out of their homes by the cattle barons whose demand that the plains remain open is backed up by intimidation, guns and a lot of muscle.

Van Heflin plays the most resolute of the farmers, a family man who can't operate a firearm but won't back down. He is supported by Shane (Alan Ladd), a mysterious, impassive drifter who might be a gunman seeking to bury his bloody past. When the cattle boss drafts in a cold eyed assassin- Jack Palance as a kind of proto-Terminator- maybe Shane will strap on his pistols one last time...

The main weakness is an astonishingly irritating performance by Brandon De Wilde as Heflin's impressionable 12 year old who hero-worships Shane. But, without him, this would be just another range war western. It's the way the stranger ingratiates his way into the the family, including the wife (a rather elderly Jean Arthur) that sets the film apart.

Maybe Ladd lacks stature, but his role remains one of the most potent in fifties cinema. It's Heflin who physically dominates the frame. But Shane is the quintessence of the western's most enduring archetype; the wandering gunfighter who can never escape his past, so must go on searching the valleys of the old west for an elusive peace.