Review of Shane (1953) by Will H — 17 Mar 2012

Shane is a classic Western of the highest order, featuring all those things we love about the movies: identifiable characters, dastardly villains, and a charismatic, likable, and mysterious hero. Director George Stevens has a full grip on the genre that he's working in, rightfully framing Shane (the character) as a mere speck in the great wilderness, one man in a grander story, but the one who can make a difference.

Alan Ladd gives a nuanced and understated performance, and creates Shane as a character and protagonist that serves as a refreshing contrast to the almost amoral antiheroes of other, bloodier Westerns.

Brandon De Wilde plays young Joey, the movie's viewer identification character, who comes to idolize Shane, and serves as the beating heart of the movie. Jean Arthur and Van Heflin play Joey's parents, and are the prototypical American family in the Old West, the thing that Shane gave up due to his wanderlust, and what drives Shane to save them.

However, I can offer no higher praise to anyone in this movie besides Jack Palance. Palance definitely earns his Academy Award nomination here as gun-for-hire Jack Wilson, one of the most menacing villains in the history of the Western genre, and a "low-down Yankee liar".

A Western that outdid most of what came before and definitively shaped what came after, Shane is a well-deserved classic of the genre, even if it shows a few cracks in its age.