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Shane Customer Reviews (16 - 18 of 24 Reviews)

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL:THE ONLY ADULT WESTERN--SHANE!!!
"Shane! You hit him with your gun! I hate you, Shane!"
--Brandon DeWilde as Joey Starrett to Alan Ladd in SHANE.

SHANE is a beautiful movie. The photography is beautiful. The music is beautiful. The stars--Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Brandon DeWilde, and Jack Palance are terrific and the character actors--like Ben Johnson, Edgar Buchanan--later a star of tv's PETTICOAT JUNCTION--and Elisha Cook, Jr.--briefly much later in his life in THE NIGHT STALKER--are fantastic. The sets and the script make you feel like you're living in the Wild West of the 1800s.

But even though a lot of reviewers say SHANE is a battle between good and evil, it's just the opposite:Director George Stevens shows people in situations where you can't clearly define what's right or wrong:SHANE's villains were settlers, the good guys are settlers. Jean Arthur is a frontier woman happily married to Van Heflin as Joe Starrett, yet suddenly she falls in love with Shane. As the movie approaches its POINT OF NO RETURN, Shane ends a fistfight with Joe Starrett by hitting Starrett on the head with his gun--with Brandon DeWilde as Starret's son Joey watching--leading to the finale where Jack Palance as Jack Wilson is a gunfighter, and Shane is a gunfighter.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL:THE ONLY ADULT WESTERN EVER MADE--SHANE!!!

Chari Krishnan RESEARCHKING

What a Difference a Director Makes!
Please regard this as a postscript to the many fine reviews of this mastepiece.

Alan Ladd was one of those great actors who might have been. Ladd's deadpan persona, which some have criticized as wooden, was the essential element in the suppressed emotion which would serve him so well in his greatest role, that of Shane.

In following Ladd's filmography, it's fascinating to see how the quality of his work is related to the complexity of the character he plays. The more complex, it seems, the better Ladd's performance. And of course, the enigma of Shane, the character's inherent complexity, lends itself perfectly to Ladd's talents.

Sue Carol, Alan Ladd's wife and agent, didn't care for directors, preferring the actor-as-producer rather than director. While this "business approach" contributed to great wealth and influence for the Ladd dynasty, it did not lend itself to the artistic achievements of which Ladd was capable. Whether this was of concern to Alan can only be conjectured.

However, one thing is certain, when Ladd was given a strong director, such as Raoul Walsh, Michael Curtiz, Edward Dmytryk or George Stevens for Shane, the results were dramatic. What may have been his finest performance was also his last, in Dmytryk's The Carpetbaqggers. As the enigmatic Nevada Smith, was Alan Ladd replaying Shane?

He has come back ... in grand style.
Sam Peckinpaugh, who directed "The Wild Bunch" and "Ride the High Country" among several other westerns, credited "Shane" as an influence on his career. Director George Stevens originally envisioned Montgomery Clift in the title role, William Holden as Joe Starrett, and Katherine Hepburn as Starrett's wife. Those are among the stories told by the director's son, George Stevens Jr., during an interesting commentary track (also featuring associate producer Ivan Moffat) on this long-awaited DVD version of this film classic. "Shane" is on most people's short lists of the best westerns ever filmed. This DVD transfer will not disappoint, although I believe the movie was originally released in a wide screen format and here it is standard frame. It is not made clear if the theater release was a matted version of this full frame, or if we are losing some of the picture here. Still, the vistas of the Grand Teton mountain range are beautiful and there is more sharpness in the picture than in the VHS version. The sound, mostly confined to the front center channel, is adequate considering this is a 1953 film. This story of the aging gunfighter, Shane, who takes part in the struggle of the homesteaders' fight with a headstrong cattleman can be enjoyed on many levels. Beautifully filmed, beautifully written, beautifully acted, this film deserves the praised heaped upon it for years. And Paramount, at the time, didn't have any idea the quality of film it had. That, too, is mentioned in the commentary, which isn't overwhelming when compared to talk on other DVDs, but it is quite entertaining. "Shane" on DVD is worth the price.

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