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Shane [1953] | ![Shane [1953]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518S4PN23YL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: George Stevens
Actors: Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon De Wilde, Jack Palance
Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment
Category: DVD
List Price: £15.99
Buy New: £14.99
You Save: £1.00 (6%)
New (6) Used (1) from £14.99
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 6312
Format: Pal
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Parental Guidance
Region: 2
Discs: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 113 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5014437834133
ASIN: B0000A5BSW
Theatrical Release Date: October 23, 1953
Release Date: October 6, 2003
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: not sealed but in mint condition, watched once
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Consciously crafted by director George Stevens as a piece of American myth making, Shane is on nearly everyone's shortlist of great movie Westerns. A buckskin knight, Shane (Alan Ladd) rides into the middle of a range war between farmers and cattlemen, quickly siding with the "sod-busters". While helping a kindly farmer (Van Heflin), Shane falls platonically in love with the man's wife (Jean Arthur, in the last screen performance of a marvellous career). Though the showdowns are exciting, and the story simple but involving, what most people will remember about this movie is the friendship between the stoical Shane and the young son of the farmers. The kid is played by Brandon De Wilde, an amazing child performer; his parting scene with Shane is guaranteed to draw tears from even the most stony-hearted moviegoer. And speaking of stony hearts, Jack Palance made a sensational impression as the evil gunslinger sent to clean house--he has fewer lines of dialogue than he has lines in his magnificently craggy face, but he makes them count. The photography, highlighting the landscape near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, won an Oscar. --Robert Horton
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
The greatest Western - Ever May 21, 2008
Peanuts (London UK)
I shall always remember the thrill as a small boy when my parents took me to a local cinema to watch a western. Randolph Scott and particularly Joen McCrea were the order of the day at the time. But Shane was such a hard act to follow regular westerns were just not the same after. Shane played by Alan Ladd, was so good that even with the enhanced photography of today there are not many westerns that can hold a candle to this thoughtful film.
It is interesting that the original intended casting was for Montgomery Clift to play the part of Shane and for William Holden to portray Joe Starrett. Whilst I can see the logic of these selections, Katharine Hepburn as the Mrs. Starrett just does not seem right somehow.
For me however, the character of Wilson played by Jack Palance generates the much needed additional "nastie" that is so evident in the film. Mr. Palance plays his part magnificently. There will surely will never be a finer example of how an evil gunfighter should be portrayed.
A truly great film with truely great characters - The start and the concluding part of the film is way it should have been. Montgomery Clift would not have stood a chance!
There are many intersting facts surrounding the film of Shane. Whilst it is accepted that Alan Ladd had problems with guns, Jack Palance had even bigger problems with horses. It is worth noting that when Wilson visits the Starret ranch with Ryker and the rest of the gang, Wilson is seen to dismount his horse. After more shots that one can remember Jack Palance was unable to dismount in an acceptable fashion. This scene was eventually filmed with Mr. Palance mounting his horse and then the scene played in reverse. Ironically it is the only thing in the whole film that did not look quite right. Watch closely next time! Now there is something for your diary tonight!
classic which still compels December 18, 2006
Mr. Ian A. Macfarlane (Fife, Scotland)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I saw this film first in the cinema in the early 50s - I would be about 8. It had a spell for me then and still has now, It's based on an excellent short book by Jack Schaefer, who wrote well and realistically about the old West. Good faces evil, but it's a complicated good, fronted by a professional killer who hates both his past and himself, and a complicated evil, the cattle baron Ryker, who was a brave frontiersman who now, threatened by inevitable progress, uses the only tactics he knows, those of the strong arm, to crack the little men who stand in his way. It has so many memorable things: an excellent, restrained performance from Alan Ladd as Shane, who wants to disown the past but in the end cannot, some wonderful shots of the wide plains (the 'Big Range' of Schaefer's fine book of short stories), fine set pieces - the killing of the homesteader outside the saloon, for example, murder in all but name, and then his moving funeral, with his dog pawing the grave - genuine pathos at the end when Shane must leave and, almost best of all, Jack Palance as Stark Wilson, the most menacing and believable of all Western paid killers (I understand that, ironically, Palance's threatening stiff-legged control of his horse was the result of the actor's relative uncertainty on horseback ; whatever - it works!). This is a great film, and if you haven't seen it, you should.
We need you, Shane! July 26, 2005
Manco (Helsinki, Finland)
33 out of 33 found this review helpful
Shane is a masterpiece, irrespective of genre. Naturally, most discussion of the film comes up in the context of 'great Western' debates but this is a little unfortunate since Shane is a great film which happens to also be a great Western.From the opening scene to the immortal closing shot Shane captures the imagination and the emotions. It is not that Shane offers anything particularly new in terms of storyline: the mysterious drifter wandering into a town where a struggle between homesteaders and cattlemen is going on was and has been a staple of Western story-telling from the beginning of the genre's popularity. Rather, Shane manages to encapsulate everything that we dream the West to be about - the good and the bad. Each scene, character, line of dialogue, moment of action is so deliberately crafted and delivered that it borders on the extreme. Take for example Shane's arrival at the home of the Starrets, he is seen riding into view through the antlers of a grazing deer. Or the symbolic importance of Shane and Joe finally uprooting the tree stump which Joe states has been a burden for nearly five years - surely the fact that the stump is finally uprooted on the day of Shane's arrival and with his assistance holds serious implications for the meaning of Shane's presence in the valley. These are but two examples in a film which makes a point in every scene. Such an approach to telling this tale has lead to the claim that Shane is film dedicated to the myth of the American West, that through the characters and the words they speak we see the West as we imagine it to have been, not what it was or will ever be. However, more than that the myth that pervades Shane is one that is true for all people in all places at all times: the hope for a new start, a life of peace and prosperity earned through hard work and self sacrifice, the renunciation of violence in favour of dialogue and compromise, integrity and principle instead of meaness and greed, chivalry, fidelity, friendship and love. The list is not complete, but you get the idea. Shane was made more than 50 years ago. It is still as beautiful to watch today as it was back then when it won an Oscar for photography. As for the story, that too is as relevant today as then - by its own admission Shane is a fairy tale of sorts and as such is eternal. One final point. In my book Once Upon a Time in the West is the ultimate Western fairy tale. Sergio Leone set out to deliberately tell a Western tale which drew on all the earlier great Westerns and present them in a romanticised fashion. The fact that Shane figures heavily as a point of reference in Leone's film is of no surprise. What precisely those references are I'll leave to you to discover for yourself!
A Western Painting July 12, 2005
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
Alan Ladd starred in one of the most spare and beautiful westerns ever captured on film in George Stevens' portrait of a lonely gunfighter and the bond he forms with a family of homesteaders under seige out west. Jack Schaefer's very good western novella was lofted to greatness by Ladd's quiet performance as the gunfighter Shane, who gets a glimpse of the life he would have preferred rather than the hand he was dealt. A story and film which sounds simple, and is often described as such, is really anything but, its complexity hidden by its scope and the subtle manner in which it is told. Shane is the mythic figure, riding in on the horizon and staying to help a family fend off a rancher trying to drive the farmers off their land. It is a story of changing times and complex relationships. Shane forms a bond with farmer Van Heflin and becomes his friend because of his decency and acceptance of Shane, even though Shane's gun and his readiness to draw at the slightest sound reveals a past and a way of life Shane would like to live down. Shane knows he is on the way out as the west changes and it is ironic that he chooses to help the family trying to build a town and a community, the very things that will be his demise. Brandon De Wilde is excellent as the young boy who needs a larger than life hero to look up to and finds him in Shane. As he and Shane form a bond, an inevitable confrontation between a deadly gunfighter hired to get rid of the homesteaders will force him to put on his gun and live up to everything the young boy feels in his heart for Shane. Jean Arthur gives a wonderful and often overlooked performance as the wife who loves her husband and son dearly, but can not deny the feelings she has for Shane. There is a point in the film where she tells her husband to just hold her and not ask any questions; everyone who has been watching knows why she does this. It is a platonic love for Shane she would never act on but it is still there. Heflin is also excellent as a solid man trying to hold the other farmers together even as a deadly gunfighter in black, symbolic of the good verses evil of the story, kills one of their own. He is no fool and senses the feelings between his wife and Shane, but knows that neither would ever betray him; Arthur because she loves him and Shane because it is not the kind of man he is. Shane's feelings for Arthur are not the threatening kind, but more a loneliness when he looks at her, as she represents everything he wanted but knows he will never have because he is a gunfighter. He tells Arthur that a gun is just a tool like an axe or a shovel, no better or worse than the man who carries it. We know Shane is the good man, and Jack Palance the bad man, quick on the draw and evil, but no match for the soft spoken but deadly Shane. The way the inevitable gunfight comes about and the way this film ends continues the larger than life myth of the American gunfighter. There is a nice score from Victor Young and good support from Edgar Buchanan as a farmer and Ben Johnson as a rancher who changes his spots, won over by the kind of man Shane shows himself to be. Shane is not only one of the great westerns, but one of the best films of any genre. It is an artistic portrait of a gunfighter and the changing landscape of the American west, as general stores and churches began to replace the lawlessness that had been settled by a fast and accurate draw for so many years. If you do not own Shane, your film library is incomplete. Every serious film buff has a spot for this masterpiece on their shelf somewhere. Make one on yours.
One of the great westerns. June 20, 2004
Simon (Cambridge UK)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
This is a classic and over the decades since its making has lost none of its charm. It has everything a good old fashioned western should have. Theres the quiet unassuming hero, Alan Ladd, who can only be pushed just so far and the dastardly bullying villian Jack Palance that he's going to have a reckoning with.The stirring music has you hooked from the start. Its wonderful, put your feet up and imagine yourself in the one and nine pennies at Saturday morning pictures.This is how cowboy films were meant to be. "Come back Shane, come back"
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