'Shane' is an epic western based upon the novel 'Shane' (1949) by Jack Schaefer. The title character Shane (Alan Ladd) is a recently retired gunfighter who puts down his weapon and picks up an axe to help homesteader Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) and his wife Marian (Jean Arthur) on their ranch. In exchange, Shane is given a small wage, bed and board. Little Joey Starrett (Brandon De Wilde) idolises Shane because he used to be a gunslinger. Shane might need to reach for his holster again as cattle baron Rufus Ryker (Emile Meyer) and his men are looking to run homesteaders off their land.
"Aren't you going to wear your six-shooter, Mister Shane?"
Jean Arthur
There are two men in 'Shane' who choose to walk together. Director George Stevens introduces rough-hewn Oklahoman Van Heflin as he strikes a firm, open-legged stance while swinging an axe. At the same time, wandering star Alan Ladd appears on horseback, and we soon learn that Shane is capable, amiable and humorous, yet sharp and tetchy, and always prepared for trouble. These two bruised icons of 1940s film noir bring unexpected psychological shadings to a pair of westerners with strong ideals, one an instinctive, professional farmer, the other a lonesome nomad, both imbued with compassion and a sense of common decency, both men led by principle. The film is built around strong genre archetypes but they become much more than that over the course of the story.
"With "High Noon" so lately among us, it scarcely seems possible that the screen should so soon again come up with another great Western film. Yet that is substantially what has happened in the case of George Stevens' "Shane," which made a magnificent appearance at the Music Hall yesterday. Beautifully filmed in Technicolor in the great Wyoming outdoors, under the towering peaks of the Grand Tetons, and shown on a larger screen that enhances the scenic panorama, it may truly be said to be a rich and dramatic mobile painting of the American frontier scene. For "Shane" contains something more than beauty and the grandeur of the mountains and plains, drenched by the brilliant Western sunshine and the violent, torrential, black-browed rains. It contains a tremendous comprehension of the bitterness and passion of the fueds that existed between the new homesteaders and the cattlemen on the open range. It contains a disturbing revelation of the savagery that prevailed in the hearts of the old gun-fighters, who were simply legal killers under the frontier code. And it also contains a very wonderful understanding of the spirit of a little boy amid all the tensions and excitements and adventures of a frontier home."
- Bosley Crowther, The New York Times
"Though he stood only 5’7”, Alan Ladd loomed large on the silver screen. Or, as in such classic Westerns as “Whispering Smith” (1948) and especially “Shane” (1953), very Tall in the Saddle. Ladd’s slight stature was compensated by his deep baritone voice and an onscreen presence that commanded attention. Cliché though it sounds, when Alan Ladd entered a scene, he dominated it. Hero, villain or everyman caught in extraordinary circumstances, Ladd convincingly filled the bill. Offscreen, Ladd was a modest, self-assuming man who was never affected by his stardom. He remained gracious to his fans, never refusing a request for an autograph. His professional kindness and generosity was noted when Ladd was twice awarded the Golden Apple (1944 and 1950) for Most Cooperative Actor. Yet sadly, Ladd suffered from his own personal demons borne of deep insecurities and a not particularly happy childhood. In a 1961 interview when Ladd was asked, "What would you change about yourself if you could?", he replied tersely: "Everything." Yet onscreen there was rarely another actor who could convey such cool and complete confidence."
- Richard Zampella, 'Alan Ladd - A Buckskin Knight In Shane'
Veronica Lake & Alan Ladd
Van Heflin & Lizabeth Scott
'Shane' features one of the most exciting fist fights in cinema and it's audaciously conjoined with a bar brawl by director Stevens. This sequence consists of a breakout between Shane and stern tough Chris Calloway (Ben Johnson). Shane isn't some perfect hero by any means - he's a man who gets beat down but always gets back up. It's a study in perseverance, a study in work ethics. But everybody knows Shane and they constantly call his name. This particular fight inspired wild west fanatic John Carpenter when he was filming a back alley bust-up for 'They Live' (1988).
"George Stevens’ training at the hands of figures like Hal Roach meant that by the time he was given the opportunity to direct himself, he had a wealth of technical experience to draw from. Edgardo Cozarinsky writes in Richard Roud’s Cinema: A Critical Dictionary that Stevens “can be seen ‘doing something’ with every scene of his major films.” Yet nearly thirty years after his death, Stevens remains a relatively ignored figure in American film history. Even though many cinemagoers know his work, most would be hard pushed to name the director of “Shane” and “Giant.” One reason for this is perhaps due to a certain snobbishness on the part of film scholars. Unlike figures such as Nicholas Ray, Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks, Stevens was never heralded as an auteur and paraded across the pages of French film magazines in the 1950s and 60s by the critics of that country. But in several crucial respects, Stevens can most definitely be considered as the ‘author’ (or at least, one of the authors) of his films. A look at his body of work reveals Stevens’ filmmaking strategy over his forty year career: quality over quantity. Unlike many of his Hollywood contemporaries, some of whom produced a film a year (and sometimes even more than that), Stevens always spent lengthy periods of pre-production working with his writers on the screenplays of his films, a process that can be documented as early as Alice Adams in 1935. As Stevens tells Mary Anne Fisher in her 1963 interview, “For me it’s absolutely necessary to start from the very beginning. I can’t think of coming and contributing something anywhere along the line other than the very start… The ‘auteur’ concept is certainly the most desirable form of filmmaking, from my point of view.” Antonio Vellani, producer of “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” was present at numerous script conferences over a period of several years. For Vellani, Stevens “was primarily a writer, with an extraordinary control of the craft of screenwriting.” In fact, as Stevens’ interview at the American Film Institute with James Silke makes clear, on at least one film he was writing as the same time as shooting, injecting a vibrant improvisatory nature to some of his work (an influence, perhaps, from his work with Laurel and Hardy), though as Edward Countryman and Evonne von Heussen-Countryman make clear, this was “much more the product of knowing where he wanted to take the film before he started shooting than of simply making it up as he went along.” As well as contributing to the writing process, Stevens often did extensive historical research for his films himself during pre-production. “I’ve always been of the opinion that a director should never touch a film without his having a basic knowledge of its contents,” he explains to William Kirschner in 1963. As such, as he goes on to explain, Stevens worked with a former member of the Dutch resistance during pre-production, and spent considerable time with Otto Frank, father of Anne, in the Amsterdam apartment where the Frank family hid from the Nazis, all to ensure that “The Diary of Anne Frank” was as true to reality as possible. When talking about “The Greatest Story Ever Told” with Bruce Petri in 1973, Stevens notes that “There is enormous responsibility involved in the subject matter. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable in going into the production of the film without the kind of study we did. Not only historic study, but more importantly Gospel studies. We had to approach our research with humility, reverence and a good deal of energy.” As a consequence, Stevens spent three years active researching before shooting a feet of film, including a lengthy visit to Israel in 1962. Stevens even hired a technical advisor for “Shane” who gave notes about everything from the costumes to the eating habits of the characters. “I believe that if you make a film properly today, it’ll be watched by people in fifty years time,” Stevens explains to Bruce Petri. “These pictures are around for a long while,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1955. “We want them to be good.”
- Paul Cronin, 'American Masters'
"One of my favourite scenes from George Stevens' films in the 1930s is in Swing Time where the two lovers sing to each other in the snow, It’s so perfectly filmed and choreographed but still with a lingering feeling that they are not in control of their destiny. The way in which the characters are directed through gesture and looks and the setting conveys the intended emotions perfectly and it is easy to see why the film won an Academy Award. The film also contains several song and dance numbers which have become famous in their own right as being examples of near perfect narrative form. His films of the 1930s from Alice Adams in 1935 to Gunga Din in 1939 were mainly aimed at young women, except for Gunga Din which was a boy’s own adventure and on of his most lovingly remembered films. Alice Adams, Annie Oakley (1935), Vivacious Lady (1938), Quality Street (1937) and A Damsel In Distress (1937), were all made in succession to one another and gained critical and popular support. They are characterised by their human angle , their visual craftsmanship and their emotional impact. There are sequences in his films that have gone down in Hollywood history as classic, just about any song and dance routine in Swing Time (1936), the kitchen scene in Woman of the Year are just two examples which are legendary and show his mastery of seamless action. He also had an eye for classical composition, refining the Hollywood style. He had a complete understanding of the formal aspects of filmmaking and how it is used to convey meaning. Stevens had an interest in young people, All of his films concern issues relating to young people and their lives in a harsh world- the difficulty of finding love and a place in society. And acceptance. From Annie Oakley to A Place in the Sun, even to The Diary of Anne Frank this was Stevens' agenda. His films followed youth and changed through the decades as youth culture changed. Decade by decade Stevens followed their trends. Stevens championed the inclusion of young people into society and the dangers that could befall them as in Shane (1953) and A Place in the Sun."
- Alastair Lyon, 'George Stevens - An American Icon'
Ernest Pagano, Ginger Rogers & George Stevens
Jack Palance
'Texas Girl At The Funeral Of Her Father' - Randy Newman
'Shane' has influenced a number of filmmakers working regularly within the western genre. Confessed fan Clint Eastwood references it most explicitly through his western 'Pale Rider' (1985). The world-class editing in 'Shane' left its stamp all over the genre, inspiring Sam Peckinpah who raised the bar even higher with the cross-cutting of 'The Wild Bunch' (1969). A set-piece on a mud walkway, in which big mouth Stonewall Terry (Elisha Cook Jr.) is hassled by snearing gunfighter Jack Wilson (Jack Palance), influenced the balletic gunfights of Italian masters Sergio Leone, Sergio Sollima and Sergio Corbucci. The innovative sound collage built for an extraordinary night tussle, with wailing horses in the mix, inspired the equally extraordinary soundtracking for the big bank job in Walter Hill's 'The Long Riders' (1980). The landscape photography drew global praise and received an official commendation issued by the executive wing of the French film industry.
"George Stevens, whose first and only Western was "Shane," made the film in 1951-52 on a budget of $1.5 million, which, as his moviemaking son George Stevens Jr. says, "Today wouldn't even pay for Arnold Schwarzenegger's perks." Young Stevens was a clerk with the "Shane" company when the movie was being filmed, keeping track of the many camera set-ups his father used. Now, almost 50 years later, he has contributed a commentary track to the beautiful new DVD release of "Shane," in which he and the film's associate producer, Ivan Moffat, recall some highlights of the picture's history. Stevens Jr. actually takes some credit for bringing the story to the screen. When he was 17, he read the novel, and in a burst of enthusiasm, he rushed into his father's bedroom to tell him what "a really good story" it was, he says. "Well, tell me the story," dad told son, and two years later, they were both on location in the Teton range in Wyoming. It had started out with Montgomery Clift, whom Stevens had directed in "A Place in the Sun" for Paramount Pictures, cast as the enigmatic Shane, with William Holden up for the role of the valiant homesteader whom Shane befriends. But Clift dropped out of the project, and with him went Holden, so Stevens, looking at the list of contract players at Paramount, picked Alan Ladd for the part, with Van Heflin taking over as the homesteader and Jean Arthur (in her last film) as Heflin's wife. The casting turned out to be fine, with Ladd giving one of his best performances. "Actors loved my dad," his son says, "because he made them comfortable on the set. He gave them confidence." But Stevens, who liked to shoot a scene from every possible angle and then put the movie together in the editing room, was a director whose perfectionism cost money, and that made his studio nervous. (Stevens Jr. estimates that his father shot a million feet of film for "Shane," and the picture was in post-production for 16 months.)"
- Richard Christiansen, The Chicago Tribune
'Martin Scorsese tells you about a shot in an old film, and it's like listening to Sidney Greenstreet telling Bogart that he must have the Maltese falcon. Perhaps the reason he is the greatest director is because he has spent the most time learning from those who went before him. Listen to him here, in a breathless passage that I supply for you word by word: "I heard that the opening shot in 'Boogie Nights' is like the shot in 'Good Fellas' where the camera tracks through the nightclub. Well, why not? I mean, we did tons of that. Myself and DePalma and Spielberg and Coppola; in so many of our films we did things that relate to earlier films. There are several shots in 'Taxi Driver' that are inspired by 'Shane.' It's homage--the self-consciousness of saying, hey, here's a little nudge in the ribs to Truffaut; that's a nudge to Fellini; that's one to George Stevens; that's one to John Ford. You find yourself looking at old films a lot. The Hitchcock pictures I like looking at repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. Very often without the sound. The Powell-Pressburger films, John Ford, Welles of course. "What happens is that you find, through these images, a way of writing with the camera that stays in your mind. 'The Wrong Man' by Hitchcock has more to do with the camera movements in 'Taxi Driver' than any other picture I can think of. It's such a heavy influence because of the sense of guilt and paranoia. Look at the scenes where Henry Fonda has to go back to the bank with the police and just walk up and down while the tellers look at him. They're deciding a man's fate. And watch the camera moves. Or the use of color in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 'The Red Shoes.' I think there's that kind of...influencing. It's not necessarily direct stealing. Each film is interlocked with so many other films. You can't get away. Whatever you do now that you think is new was already done in 1913."'
- Roger Ebert on the films of Martin Scorsese, The Chicago Sun-Times
Edith Head's golden puffer wedding dress is worn by Jean Arthur during the 4th of July celebrations
Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur & Van Heflin pose for a studio portrait
'Susan's Song' - Al Jarreau
Victor Young's vibrant orchestral music composed for 'Shane' is alive and instantaneous but the drama edges deeper and deeper into the darkness. During the film's stark final confrontation, tortured soul Alan Ladd, who first emerged as a legend of paranoid noir, is once again thrown back into the shadows, and as always, Shane is being carefully observed by those around him. You sense his pain is sincere and his body is aching but it's an impossible situation for a veteran gunslinger to be in.
