"SHANE" STAKES WESTERN CLAIM

          A simple yet effective sun god myth set in the Old West.
          Alan Ladd stars as the title character, a lone stranger with a mysterious past who decides to help hard-working homesteader Joe Starett (Heflin), a man who wants to protect his wife and young son from a greedy land-grabber trying to terrorize the family into abandoning their home.
          With the Grand Tetons as a spectacular backdrop, Shane (1953) benefits from fantastic photography of wide and windy open spaces. It's a story about courage, family, and friendship from the man who would later direct James Dean's final picture, Giant (1956) and several other movie classics. It's a story about honor, keeping one's word, and doing the right thing in a hard and unjust world.
          Quoth glistening Heflin to glistening Ladd whilst shoving in conjoined might against a stubborn stump: "Sometimes there ain't nothin' will do but your own sweat and muscle." Oh gosh, yeah!
          Soaring music, gigantic sky, an uncomplicated story thoroughly worked, girded by themes of love and freedom. Kinda gets ya right here.
          Partly what makes the film work so well is Ladd's cinematic radiance of clean decency. Not seeming a tough guy but rather a "golden angel of the gun" who puts up more of a fight than the terrorizers bargained for helps the movie enormously.
          The bad guys wind up getting a dark angel of their own--Jack Palance, in a career-defining role--who threatens to pull Shane back into the gunfighting he deplores.
          Clint Eastwood stars in the Shane re-make he directed, 1985's Pale Rider. That film has some good scenes, but it's not as memorable as the source material, even with Eastwood, because the original clearly defines the lead characters. Wah-hahh.
          As a subplot, we also see a certain attraction between Joe's wife Marion (Arthur) and Shane. (In this respect, Shane does double-duty, bearing aspects comparable with both Lancelot the Supposedly Chaste and Arthur the Secret Sun God.) Also, we see the hero-worship of Joe and Marion's little towhead boy, Joey, for quick-on-the-draw Shane.
          Featuring Elisha Cook Jr. as the diminutive yet determined fellow homesteader who stands up to the doers of evil as best he can.
          The fights are great--except for the times we see stunt doubles, of course. But, what the hey.
          The Western classic freely available online.


SHANE
Starring Alan Ladd,
Van Heflin,
Jean Arthur,
Jack Palance,
Elisha Cook Jr.
Brandon De Wilde
Directed by George Stevens
Written by A.B. Guthrie Jr, Jack Sher
Based on the novel by Jack Schaefer
Runtime 118 minutes

Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE