I didn't "get" Shane when I first saw it in 1953 when I just fourteen, and I didn't ''get" it again last night when I watched it for the fourth or fifth time, lifetime. It's a watchable film in my considered opinion but I have no idea why various canon-creators have ranked it third or fourth among all Westerns. I revere Westerns but I can't revere Shane.
Not that there aren't some splendid moments. The first scene, when little Joey with his kid-size rifle peers through the brush at a deer while, in the distance, and through Joey's eyes, we see the figure of Shane a-horseback is an excellent piece of film-making. We're going to see the whole movie through the eyes of a child, the cinematography tells us. Moreover, it's going to be a film about guns and Joey's love of guns and gunslingers. It's a very American story shot through with the romance of weaponry, as is made clear right from the get-go.
But it's downhill from there. The plot is minimal, classic, and familiar. A Stranger Comes to Town. Even when I was a dewy youth I knew that Shane was going to intervene in the struggle between the farmers and the ranchers. And that he would resist as long as possible getting out his gun, and that his conversion to violence would be cast as a Higher Moral Purpose. I had seen it all before, even as an adolescent -- you can't negotiate with the bad guys; your weapon has to be better than their weapon.
Van Heflin is the homesteader. He's a great, unappreciated actor, in my view. But Alan Ladd is not credible as the mysterious stranger. First of all, he's expressionless in face and monotonous in speech. Secondly, he lacks even a tad of the charisma that's required of him. And thirdly, he's too small and skinny for all the bareknuckle stuff. And Jean Arthur, I'm afraid, was simply too dowdy to attract anyone's interest. The cast can't carry it off. Too much burden on the child actor, Brandon de Wilde.
Why does Shane ride into the sunset at the conclusion of the story? Why is the most famous dialogue in the film, little Joey's plaintive "Shane, come back. Come back, Shane?" There's really no good reason; nothing inside the film compels his departure. Shane rides off because that's what the heroes of Westerns do. The film is saturated with myth of the unconnected guy (well, he does have his horse and his rifle) riding off, untrammeled by home, hearth, kids and especially wives.
It's a powerful myth. My deep resistance to the film is that it is myth-driven rather than character- or plot-driven. Shane doesn't create a myth; the myth creates Shane.
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