Shane | Shane | Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur

A prototype western | Shane | Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur

DVDs:


	• Shane Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur Paramount, 2000 average customer review:based on 174 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Shane is a classic old western film.

This film was just good but I wouldn't say it was brilliant, if you like old westerns like Highnoon then your going to love this film I thought that Highnoon was better but still these two films were both classics.
A mysterious drifting gunfighter named Shane (Alan Ladd) comes to the rescue of a homstead family terrorized by an ageing cattleman and his hired gun (Jack Palance) who is a tall and very menacing villian that won't let anyone stand in his way.
The cattle ranger wants all the homesteaders to leave cause he wants thier land and he does this by beating them or bullying them so they could give up, of course everything changes once Shane arrives at first no one knows who this guy is even the corrupt ranchers give him a nickname like sodbuster or sodypop I think I can't remember and start laughing and ridiculing him but Shane ignores them untill a tragic incident happens and so Shane has had enough and will not tolarate there behaviour, the shocked community would rather leave cause they don't want another death to happen.
The film has great tense moments especially at the bar/saloon where most of the action takes place including a hillarious fight scene but then again I remembered that this film was done in 1953 so I wasn't that bothered. Everything from the script to the acting and cinamatography was great and I thought that it was a bit slow in the beggining but still remained to be a fantastic western.

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Shane

Good Old Fashioned Western.
Well written and acted.
Only drawback it doesn't come in "Widescreen"

A prototype western

Good vs evil, probably the best scenario for an excellent story espeically when the two are so well deleneated. No cursing, no overt sex just a good story with good characterizations something an intelligent writer puts forth. There's very little intelligence exhibited in screen writing or tv writing today. It's a lost art. Here is an example for the ages to illustrate just how that is done.

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"You can't change what you're meant to be"

Got rained out this past Saturday night so I trotted this 50 year old plus film out. It's still great and but for the dialogue, which makes sense although still a little whimsical, this is by far on anyone's short list of great westerns.

It's the old conflict (you see it again 50 years later in the great Duvall-Costner western "Open Range") of the cattle drivers versus the new farmers. Alan Ladd, searching for a quiet life following too much gunfighting, stumbles on Jean Arthur and Van Heflin struggling with the conflict. Heflin befriends him and so he hangs up his guns and makes a go of it. He and Joe (Heflin) work together, but as the picture evolves Joe knows that his wife, Marion (Arthur) fancies Shane but as Joe says, he's aware of it but trusts her.

My father used to tell me that this was great movie making because both Ladd and Heflin and Arthur never act on impulse. It's all done with their exceptional acting skills. It's a feeling that permeates their dialogue.

The perfect villain is Walter Jack Palance who earned his movie spurs for his role a Jack Wilson, an evil killer and hired gun.

The child of Joe and Marion is Brandon de Wilde as the ten year old Joey. I have never made up my mind about Joey. His line "come back Shane" is the line we remember from the movie (although Ladd's delivery of 'Marion, a gun is just a tool, as good or as bad as the man who holds it' may be the best line of the movie), but the kid certainly played on your nerves. Who knew.

A sidelight is what happened to Shane? He leaves of course and we also know that he was shot in the final scene with Wilson. I heard one reviewer say that he died but I wasn't able to determine that. Still a great, great western and you should see it or see it again. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury

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A Noble Era in American Filmmaking

There's nothing like revisiting a movie from your childhood (1953) & experiencing it 50 years later. Such was my re-entry back to this Western classic, a morality tale of Shane, a gunslinger-with-a-past who captivates all who meet him. Alan Ladd, in mid-career, plays the lead, opposite the charming, breathy-voiced Jean Arthur, who, in real life, was a late-blooming Hollywood actress, age 52 to Ladd's 40. Her devoted marriage in the film to the commanding homesteader Van Heflin is deepened by the obvious platonic attraction she and Ladd share, as does Jean Arthur's son, the young Brandon de Wilde, surely one of the screen's best child actors. De Wilde's open face & saucer-like blue eyes act as an exclamation point for Alan Ladd's unflagging character & integrity.

Deemed a classic by the Library of Congress, this early startlingly Technicolor film will bring back memories of an era past. The swinging door saloon becomes the stage to test men's souls - bang! bang! - and is set against the wide blue skies and mountains of Wyoming, evoking a zenlike obligation to duty and conscience. Archvillain Jack Palance, who snakes into town, embodies evil, his otherworldly face, unbeknownst to the viewer, had, in earlier years, been surgically reconfigured after he suffered severe burns after bailing out of a bomber during WW II.

The suspense and mystery steadily flow, held together by a symphony of dramatic music, until the final haunting scenes between the quiet understated hero who, like the samurai of Feudal Japan must do what is right, while young De Wilde gazes in admiration at his forever hero.

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