Shane
I know that my mother and brother would not go along with this being in a top movie list of any type, but that aside it is number four on my top four Westerns list.
I had planned on making this a top five or top ten list, but truly I could only think of four Westerns that really stand out. This movie stars Alan Ladd as a drifting gun slinger who is looking to get away from the fast life of the gun and the evils that it represents and settle down to a different existence. He stumbles into a war between farmers and cattlemen, the little guy vs big business in a world where there is no government to protect one side from the other. He also stumbles into a household where the wife Marian Starrett played by Jean Arthur, is conflicting with her husband Joe Starrett played by Van Heflin about what role they as a family should play in this war. Marian wants to give up and leave, move on to an easier life somewhere else. Joe wants to fight it out for everything he believes he deserves because this is where he has been told he can settle and if people like him don't stand up who will. There are really multiple stories going on here and they all run mingled together to form a story that is real and complex like life. No one in the story is fully good or fully evil and Shane finds himself choosing to stand with one side over the other mainly because of his own self loathing.
There are great performances in this movie by Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Emile Meyer, John Dierkes, and Jack Palance. But perhaps the best thing about this movie is the job of directing done by George Stevens. It is a beautiful to look at movie that is very paced giving time for the story, characters, and scenes to develop. The movie got seven Oscar nominations and won one for Best Cinematography, Color.
