Shane

Movie: Shane (1953)

AFI List #69 on the 1998 list and #45 on the 2007 list

My List #41

Starring: Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur

My rating: ˜˜˜

This was a western, so I went into this warily. One thing it had going for it was that this is the third George Stevens movie I've watched from this list and the other movies were pretty good.

Shane is about a gunslinger who is trying not to be a gunslinger. He is hired on a ranch to help out Joe Starrett and his family. But he gets pulled into a local fight over ranching rights. Most of the homesteaders are against Ryker, the rancher. Starrett's 8-year-old son Joey is infatuated with Shane and thinks he can do no wrong. Finally the fight comes to a showdown against Shane and a hired gunslinger Wilson.

Now, I've heard about Shane for a long time, because of the famous line by Joey: "Shane! Shane! Come back, Shane". And it's always said in a whiny, high pitched voice. However, I didn't find it nearly as whiny or annoying as I expected it to be. I guess I had high expectations.

This was a very visually rich movie, as I'm coming to expect from George Stevens, and I found out this was the first movie to be shown widescreen. Paramount built a specific screen just for this film so they wouldn't have to cut a lot of the wide shots. I thought that was pretty cool.

So, I probably wouldn't watch this again, but it wasn't torture to see. If you like Westerns, I would recommend this.