Shane

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Director: George Stevens

Stars: Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon de Wilde, Jack Palance

Year: 1953 Running Time: 118 mins Rating:

Alan Ladd is the enigmatic gunfighter drawn into a feud between hard-working homesteaders and avaricious cattlemen in 1890s Wyoming. With Jean Arthur as the rancher's welcoming missus and Jack Palance as the greedmongers' bullying enforcer, there's no prize for guessing whose side he takes. Loyal Griggs won an Oscar for his sweeping cinematography while Palance, his young co-star Brandon De Wilde (as the farmer's worshipful son), director George Stevens and the picture itself were all nominated.

Review

Even though it's as easily paced as you'd expect of a two-hour film adapted from a novelette, George Stevens' western caught the public imagination in no uncertain fashion.

Its gunplay is magnetically powerful and the camerawork superb. The only surprise was that Loyal Griggs' award for Technicolor photography was the only Oscar the film received.

Alan Ladd, who was shamefully denied even a nomination, found that 'Shane' to some extent revived his faltering stardom, in a role similar in some respects to the one that originally shot him to fame in 'This Gun for Hire'.

It also provided Jean Arthur with a stirring swan song to her career, as the rancher's wife half in love with the gunman. And there's tremendous support from a mightily sinister Jack Palance as a sadistic gunslinger.