'Shane': A One-Man Cavalry in the Lawless West

'Shane': A One-Man Cavalry in the Lawless West

By PETER COWIE

Released 60 years ago, when the western was arguably at its apogee, "Shane" had in fact been shot some two years earlier in northwest Wyoming. Paramount Pictures had fretted over director George Stevens's protracted editing and then, spurred by the "wider still and wider" spirit of the time (Cinerama as well as the nascent CinemaScope processes), opened the picture in a ratio of 1.66:1, which meant the image was sheared at top and bottom, cinematographer Loyal Griggs having composed the film for the traditional "Academy" ratio of just 1.37:1. The Variety reviewer of the time, however, saw immediately the value of this "socko drama of the early West…by no means a conventional giddyap oater."

The western had come of age during the postwar years thanks to excellent writing and a willingness to confront some contentious social issues. "Broken Arrow" (1950) touched on the unjust treatment of Indian tribes; "The Gunfighter" (1950), perhaps the first "psychological" western, saw Gregory Peck reluctant to draw his six-shooter; "High Noon" (1952) cast Gary Cooper as the veteran marshal who must summon his courage just one last time before retirement. Howard Hawks's "Red River" (1948), with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift as brawling companions along the Chisholm Trail, had pioneered this sense of uncertainty among hitherto stalwart western heroes. John Ford had given a poetic tinge to his studies of soldiers coping with the dangers of frontier life.

"Shane" boasted an impeccable pedigree: Based on a much-praised maiden novel by Jack Schaefer, it featured a screenplay by Pulitzer Prize-winner A.B. Guthrie Jr., who had himself grown up in Montana; the flawless Alan Ladd as the hero; and, at the helm, Mr. Stevens, who had won an Academy Award a few months earlier for "A Place in the Sun."

"Shane" deals with the settlers of northwest Wyoming—brave souls who had tamed and cultivated the virgin West during the mid-19th century—and those among them who became obsessed with power and territory. As in Michael Cimino's much later, and much maligned, "Heaven's Gate" (1980), there are allusions to the notorious Johnson County War of 1892, with homesteader Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) and neighboring settlers harassed by the ruthless Ryker brothers. The law did not exist on the frontier, and the nearest marshal was three days' ride away. So when Shane comes riding out of the high plains, en route for "somewhere I ain't been yet," he provides much-needed moral and physical assistance to Starrett and his community. Mr. Stevens suggests this in one of the film's most celebrated scenes, as Shane and Starrett labor in unison to uproot an obstinate tree stump outside the farmstead.

Staple elements of the traditional western—the Civil War, "Injuns," the U.S. Cavalry—hover discreetly in the background. "Stonewall" Torrey (Elisha Cook Jr.) is teased affectionately by his fellow settlers because he owes his origins so proudly to Alabama; old man Ryker (Emile Meyer) boasts that his shoulder still aches from a Cheyenne arrowhead decades earlier; and Shane, riding tall against the ominous sky, represents a kind of one-man Cavalry. Haunted by an undisclosed past, he seems condemned to wander the horizon forever in search of redemption. He leaves an indelible impression on young Joey Starrett (Brandon De Wilde), who begins to perceive that a gun is only as good or as bad as the man who wields it.

The influence of John Ford is manifest throughout "Shane," notably in the use of traditional folk songs, the funeral sequence on the hillside, and the quirky minor characters in the drama. Mr. Ladd's face, like Henry Fonda's in "My Darling Clementine," serves as an open tableau of regret. And the incipient attraction between Shane and Marian Starrett (Jean Arthur) runs like a bass line through the picture, just as Mr. Ford would later portray the romantic tie between Ethan and Martha in "The Searchers." Feelings are suggested rather than stated.

To a public regularly subjected to Sen. Joseph McCarthy's zealous pursuit of hidden communists, "Shane" offered a clear choice between good and evil, with the blond hair and light-colored clothes of Shane and the Starretts contrasting with Jack Palance's sinister Wilson, attired in black from Stetson hat to dark leather gloves and boots. In this context, Wilson becomes a Lucifer of the West, with Shane as his antagonist, a kind of avenging angel.

Fist-fights and shootouts are essential to the classic western, and Mr. Stevens and his editors William Hornbeck and Tom McAdoo created one of the wittiest and most sustained action sequences as Shane and Starrett slug it out with the Ryker gang in a bar that is almost completely demolished by the time the fight ebbs to a close. The best-timed of the gunfights shows a sadistic Wilson shooting the hapless Stonewall Torrey in cold blood. Mr. Stevens had the actor Elisha Cook Jr. yanked backward into the mud by concealed wires so as to emphasize the brutal impact of a Colt at close range.

Parts of "Shane" may seem naive—even corny—today, and the idealism and moral stance of Joe Starrett strike an awkward note in a 21st century where cynicism tends to rule. But the film survives in triumph thanks to its meticulous attention to period detail: the authentic costumes, the sights and sounds of a small farm, the muddy terrain in front of Grafton's Store, the foreboding storms, and the mighty Teton range girdling the action and evoking an agrarian landscape in which people live, and rejoice, and die. Jackson Hole served as location to other fine westerns, but none immersed the audience so effectively in the environment as did "Shane."

—Mr. Cowie has written some two dozen books on the movies, including "John Ford and the American West" (Abrams, 2004).

A version of this article appeared September 21, 2013, on page C13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: One-Man Cavalry In the Lawless West.