Shane [DVD] [1953]

Films such as this set the stage for the Westerns to follow, back in the 50's and 60's Westerns were what 'Sci-Fi' has becometo today's movie fans.Often starring childhood hero's such as 'Alan Ladd' ...'Shane' is seen by many as one of the all-time 'Classic' Westerns.A drifter 'Shane' rides onto a homestead seeking only for a cup of water, the owner 'Joe Starrett' (Van Heflin) is at first suspiciousof the stranger because he seems to quick to re-act to quickly to his son 'Joey' (Brandon De Wilde) cocking his unloaded rifle.'Joe' asks 'Shane' to leave when riders approach not wanting to encourage any trouble, it's land-baron 'Ryker' (Emile Meyer) andhis men.....'Ryker' wants 'Joe' and his family along with all the other homesteader's off the lands they'd staked a claim on, he washere before them and see's the lands as his.....'Shane' hadn't left the property and stood alongside 'Joe' as 'Ryker' had his say.'Joe's' wife 'Marian' (Jean Arthur) suggests that 'Shane' share's a meal with them and beds down for the night in the barn.Some while ago 'Joe' employed help, 'Ryker' had scared them off, though 'Shane' has no roots the offer of a job and a place to stayfor a while seems like a good idea.When riding into town to collect a few supplies 'Shane' is given a cold reception by one or two of 'Ryder's' men and told by 'Calloway' (Ben Johnson) to stay away from town, 'Shane' knows the score but the retired gun-fighter walks away...this time.'Rylker' see's 'Joe' as the main obstacle in his attempt to drive the homesteaders off their lands, he's the one person holding themtogether, without him, they would all leave.'Ryker' decides to hire himself a gunman to ensure he reclaims the lands in the shape of 'Jack Wilson' (Jack Palance ( who back then still carried the name 'Walter' ahead of 'Jack' on the credits)After taunting and killing one of the homesteaders 'Stonewall' Torrey (Elisha Cook jnr) 'Joe' to keep the homesteaders from runningfor the hills decides to face 'Ryker' and his killer 'Wison' however drifter 'Shane' knows his friend cannot out-gun 'Wilson''Shane' will set out to stand alone against 'Ryker' and his hired gun.This is truly a Classic-Western from yester-year that many will remember admiring as a child perhaps....it's old-school, typical of thosethat graced our cinema's back in 1953 and beyond.There are some well-staged fist-fights along the way leading to the final showdown.Good Upgrade to the Blu-ray format.This is a two-disc set which offers viewing in 1,37:1 on disc one, 1.66:1 in either mono or stereo on disc two.(Sub-Titles for the hard of hearing)Audio-Commentary by George Stevens jr. and producer Ivan Moffat - and Video interview with scholar Neil Sinyard.Complete Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of Shane - plus original Theatrical Trailer.The package also comes with a 36-page booklet....with writings from film-criitc Penelope Huston and an unpublished interview withStevens........and more.

Excellent story and characters. The mysterious stranger befriends the honest, decent, farmer and his family. He becomes a hero to the man's son, and deals with bad guys with great style before riding off into the sunset. An all time great Western.

This is a review of the bluray transfer, movie and comparison between the Region free USA release and this new UK version. I already have Shane on USA region free bluray but I had to get this uk edition as it is a limited run.Should you buy this version if you already have the USA import? Good question. How do they compare? This new edition has three different versions in 1:37 and 1:66 aspect ratio. I consider the two 1:66 versions to be inferior to the American release. The reformatted 1:66 looks considerably worse.This leaves us with the new 1:37. It's very close between this and the USA release but I believe that the UK 1:37 is better, but only just. As a limited release this makes the new version essential even if you already own the USA release .What about the movie. In my opinion is second only to the Searchers as a western. I regard The Searchers as the greatest movie of all time. But I consider Shane to be the finest example of cinematography in the history of cinema. It will never be equalled due to a today's paucity of talent, the costs, digital being inferior to celluloid and lazy reliance on CGI.George Stevens night shooting at the end of the movie wrote the book on how to shoot effectively in near darkness. The results in Shane are almost beyond belied. What Stevens achieved in near darkness in 1953 is astonishing. Don't ask me how Stevens captured the light without using any lighting Assistance.My admiration for this movie is clear and unashamed. I don't need to to go into the nuances of the movie or the ending. Suffice to say that the bluray is absolutely essential. Any movie fan should have this in their collection. I can safely say that they are totally unable to make movies of this quality anymore. This is one of the few movies that etches itself into your memory.

“Shane” is one of the greatest Westerns and has held that assessment since it first came out in 1953. It’s near the top of most lists along with films like “The Searchers” and “High Noon”. This is because everyone involved in it was at the top of their game and believed in the picture. Paramount gave it an enormous (for a Western) 1.5 million dollar budget and assigned its top people to the project. Director George Stevens, one of the greats of the classic era, was one of those versatile directors like Howard Hawks who could handle any genre. On the surface, a director known for thirties comedies and films like “Alice Adams”, Katharine Hepburn’s breakthrough film and “Swing Time” the greatest of the Astaire/Rogers musicals would not seem to be the guy to direct a Western, but he had the skill and did it superbly. The writers of the screenplay and the book it was based on were both steeped in the genre and both wrote major Western novels. The original novel by Jack Schaefer was an expansion of his three-part serialized story, “Rider From Nowhere”, published in Argosy magazine in the summer of 1946, which contained all of the essential characters and plot elements. It stood out from the beginning for its serious tone and language in what was basically a pulp magazine. Schaefer wrote over a dozen Western novels including “Monte Walsh”. A.B. Guthrie wrote the screenplay and was brought in just for the film. He was not normally a screenwriter but a well-known Western novelist who was known for “The Big Sky” and the Pulitzer Prize winning, “The Way West”. Guthrie’s novels were usually set in the Montana-Wyoming area and he lived on a ranch in Teton County, Montana.Alan Ladd was at the peak of his career at this time. He had spent many frustrating years in Hollywood until his agent and future wife Sue Carol got him a contract and his breakout role in “This Gun for Hire” (1942). He had to fight against the industry’s ideal of the tall, dark leading man as he was relatively short (5’7”) and blond. For this reason he was paired in seven films with the 5’2” Veronica Lake, with whom he also had great chemistry. He became a major star playing tough guys in noir and action films, aided by his deep and resonant voice and ability to play troubled characters. He brings strength, mystery and a kind side to Shane, a man with an unknown past that seems to have included being a gunfighter. He’s the man with no name - we never learn if he’s using his given name - one of the archetypes of Westerns and hero tales in general.Jean Arthur had been one of the queens of screwball comedy, so she seems an unlikely choice for a Western, but Stevens had directed her in two films and liked her. Though very subdued compared to her early performances, she’s warm and tender as Marian Starrett, a more complex character than the usual pioneer mother as she is obviously very attracted to Shane but also totally devoted to her husband and child. At one point she tells her son, “He’s a fine man. Yes, I like him too, Joey” with all the nuance that the boy can’t pick up but the audience can. This was her last film role. Van Heflin is Joe Starrett, husband and father and the man who sees good in Shane and allows him to stay with the family on their homestead. He played every type of role in the 1940s and after and is convincing as the kind of man who would bring his family to settle in 1880s Wyoming Territory. Fans may notice that once again he has to see his cinematic wife dance with another man as he did in 1949’s “Madame Bovary”, only this time under more pleasant circumstances. Their son, Joey is the teller of the story in the novel and contrary to the usual movie, here is a central character who develops a hero-worshiping relationship with Shane. This is a big part to entrust to a ten-year-old child, but Brandon deWilde came through with wonderful reactions and sincerely spoken lines, especially his famous last words. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his work (it was an honor being put in with the adults but I’d have preferred them giving one of those small statuettes they formerly awarded child actors without competition). Jack Palance had just gotten his big break in the previous year’s “Sudden Fear” and cemented his villainous image in “Shane”. He’s frightening as gunslinger Jack Wilson in his black hat as he slowly saunters into town and when he first enters the bar, even the dog gets up and leaves. He doesn’t overplay it either, being menacingly quiet much of the time and seems to find killing a game. He too was nominated as Best Supporting Actor. In a smaller role, Western stalwart Ben Johnson adds to the film as a bad guy with a change of heart.The story is set during the historic Range War known as the Johnson County War, a setting for several other films. It’s the frequently told conflict between farmer settlers and cattle barons and the issue was fences and water. (Historically this was the opposite of the usual in places from Ancient Rome to Medieval Europe where wealthy landowners increased the size of their holdings by enclosing public land with fences while here it was the farmers putting up fences, legally according to the Homestead Acts). This was a regional “war” going on in Montana and Wyoming with a mix of organized rustling gangs, wealthy and politically connected ranchers and European settlers who the ranchers didn’t mind being included with the rustlers when they began hiring gunslingers. It’s too long to go into here but eventually it even included President Benjamin Harrison sending in the cavalry to rescue gunmen who were trapped on the ranches by a posse of over 200 men sent by the State Legislature. The scope was narrowed, of course, because they wanted to make a dramatic film, not a documentary.Though the film takes the side of the homesteaders, who after all, were following the law and not hiring gunmen, it does give big rancher Morgan Riker a chance to explain the ranchers’ side, “We built the range”.A big part of the film is its magnificent location, and the cinematography by Lloyd Griggs, which was the only winner among the film’s six Academy Award nominations. It was the year of “From Here To Eternity” which won 8 of the 13 categories and was more Academy-friendly in the early 50s when Westerns were considered a lesser type of film). The jagged Tetons give the film a mythical aspect and they are almost always present in the background. They are as important here as John Ford’s Monument Valley. It’s a setting for gods and heroes, not mortal men. Finally there’s the wonderful score by Victor Young, one of his best known and most beautiful. Titled “The Call of the Faraway Hills” it’s in the earlier folk-based style of western music before “The Big Country” (1958) and “The Magnificent Seven” (1960) established Aaron Copeland-styled music as the sound of the film Western. It is open and beautiful and seems to flow all around you. It in fact, plays almost throughout the film at an almost unheard level, only asserting itself when necessary. The music absolutely soars during the tree stump scene and becomes a menacing, brassy and pounding march when Shane goes to town for the final showdown. For Marian he inserted a sweet Polish dance tune originally titled “La Varsovienne” and in 19th century America “Put Your Little Foot”, representing feminine warmth and domesticity.There is so much going on in this film and so many nice touches. It’s Joey who first sees Shane approaching while he is about to shoot a deer (we do not know yet that his rifle isn’t loaded and so are tense about it). Shane is shown to be a heroic, almost magical hero by the deer being “saved” by running away when it hears him approaching. The camera then shows Shane from Joey’s perspective in one of its most famous shots, looking up at a larger than life figure against a vast blue sky. When Shane begins to teach Joey how to handle a gun and shoot, he shows amazing dexterity with it, signaling as did his reaction to hearing Joey cock his rifle earlier, that he has far more familiarity and skill with it than even the average cowboy. Later in the scene he notes, “A gun is just a tool. A gun is as good as the man using it, Marian. No better or no worse than any tool, an ax, a shovel, anything. Remember that.” This is the only peek we get at his possible gunfighter past. It’s brought up again when Ryan tells him, “Gunfighter, your time is over.” To which Shane answers, “What about yours? The difference is I know it.” Shane is different from the homesteaders and can’t settle down with them. Within the film he feels that “There’s no living with a killing” But beyond that, as a mythic hero he’s done. He came where help was needed and now he must move on.

Shane, like "High Noon," "The 3:10 To Yuma," "The Searchers," "The Magnificent Seven," or "Lonesome Dove," is a classic, one of those films that, when you see it for the first time, feels a bit cliched. That's because this film was the first to explicate those cliched themes. Everything that came after was the real cliche.I never thought Alan Ladd was that great an actor. And he isn't here. His Shane is a morally bankrupt killer who sees, in the homesteaders he befriends, the humanity he left behind when he strapped on his six shooter. Shane would attempt something that countless films, both Westerns & other genres, would repeat: moral redemption through association & then sacrifice.In the case of Shane, redemption takes the form of Van Heflin & his family. Heflin is a dirt farmer, but a dirt farmer who encapsulates the American Dream of going West, getting some land &, thereby, marking yourself as someone who counts. He is also a deeply moral man, one who knows what's right because of his ties to the land. He is Jeffersonian democracy's arch-type, the yeoman farmer who is the bedrock of the Republic.Jean Arthur, as Heflin's wife, is a more nuanced character. Her exposure to Shane, who, it seems, comes from some Southern gentry stock, exposes her own social standing, which is definitely superior to her husband's. This point is driven home, even to Heflin, when he sees his wife & Shane dancing. He realizes that Shane & his wife come from the same stock &, given the right circumstances, are more than suited to each other. The look on Heflin's face as he realizes this is one of the movie's high-points.As for Brandon de Wilde's character, Heflin's son, through whose eyes most of the story unfolds, he doesn't really understand what the grown-ups are fighting about, but it scares him. He sees in Shane some exotic creature that can cure what ails his parents. To live up to that expectation is one of the main causes of much of what Shane does.The movie also highlights the tension, often spilling over into violence, associated with the "settling" of the West. Ranchers & cattlemen, having established themselves on a cattle economy which in turn was dependent on almost unlimited prairie grazing, looked more than askance at "dirt farmers" who wanted to section into farms land the ranchers considered belonged to them & their cattle. Since pretty much everyone was wearing gun, the violence that ensured was inevitable.Shane is the Western version of the Knight Errant &, as such, drives the story. If you've ever wondered where the themes for many of the movies you've already watched originated, then have a look at Shane.

sublime film.Livraison ultra rapide et vendeur sérieux que je recommande.Ce bluray est un régal!

Excelente película, seguramente referencia del Jinete Pálido y mas recientemente Logan. Recomendable para los amantes del género. Esta versión en blu-ray es muy buena. Difícil de conseguir.

I have always liked the classic western of Shane. It is a real melodrama of good and evil with a brilliant visual backdrop through the film. The director shows his advanced talent in the production by including in many scenes spiritual insights that embellish the purpose of the film and bring its value to a higher level spiritually. Lots of good encounters with the young boy who holds fast the drama emotionally with strong emotional interactions with Shane and why he came into his family. Good exposure for anyone who is curious about the high the moral fiber in our character.