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Shane Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 24 Reviews)

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.

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

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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