Shane (1953) Full Movie Free Download

[Geraldine Ferraiz]

Lookedat a certain way, the entire story of "Shane"is simply a backdrop against which the hero can play out his own personalrepression and remorse. The movie is conventionally seen as the story offarmers standing up to the brutal law of the gun in the Old West, with a lonerider helping a settler hold onto his land in the face of hired thugs.

Looka little more carefully and you find that the rider and the farmer's wife feelan attraction for one another. And that Shane is touched by the admiration ofyoung Joey, the son of the farm couple. Bring Freud into the picture and youuncover all sorts of possibilities, as the newcomer dresses in sissy clothesand absorbs insults and punishment from the goons at the saloon, beforestrapping on his six-gun and proving himself the better man.

It'snot that a greater truth lurks in the depths of George Stevens'"Shane" (1953). It's that all of these levels coexist, making themovie more complex than a simple morality play. Yes, on the surface, Shane isthe gunfighter who wants to leave his past behind him, who yearns for the sortof domesticity he finds on Joe Starrett's place in the Grand Tetons. Yes,someone has to stand up to the brutal Rufus Ryker (Emile Meyer), who wants totear down the fences and allow his cattle to roam free. Yes, Shane is theman--even though he knows that if he succeeds he'll have to leave the valley."There's no living with a killing," Shane tells Joey, after shooting threemen dead in the saloon. "There's no going back from it. Right or wrong,it's a brand, a brand that sticks."

Yes,the picture works on that level, and on that level it was nominated as one ofthe best films of 1953. But if it only worked on that level, it would havegrown dated, like "High Noon" and certain other classic Westerns.There are intriguing mysteries in "Shane," puzzles and challenges,not least in the title character and the way he is played by Alan Ladd.

Laddwas a movie star of below-average stature and strikingly good looks, and formuch of his career he worked around both of those attributes in roles where hewas photographed to look tough and taller. In "Shane," he is franklyseen as a neat, compact man, no physical match for the hired guns like Wilson(Jack Palance) and Calloway (Ben Johnson) who tower over him. He rides intotown with a buckskin fringe on his jacket, looking a tad precious to my eyes,and goes to the store to buy a new kit--dress slacks and a blue shirt with anopen collar that makes him look almost effeminate in contrast to the burly,whiskered gunmen who work for Ryker and live, apparently, in the saloon.

Hisfirst visit to the saloon sets up the undercurrent for the whole story. Dressedlike a slicker, he orders a soda pop. The cowboys snicker. Calloway amblesover, calling him a "sodbuster" who smells like a pig--a reference tohis plowing duties on the farm of Starrett (Van Heflin). Shane asks, "Youspeaking to me?" Calloway replies, "I don't see nobody else standingthere." The confrontation ends with Calloway throwing a drink on Shane'snew shirt, while we're wondering if Travis Bickle was a fan of this film.

Onthe farm, Jean Arthur plays Marion, Joe's wife and Joey's mother, and there'sobvious chemistry between her and the handsome visitor who is now sleeping inthe barn. She never acts on it, nor does Shane. They have too much respect forJoe, we sense. Little Joey is meanwhile so starry-eyed in admiration that Shanebecomes a father figure, significantly teaching him how to fire a gun; during afight scene, Joey watches happily while eating a candy cane. On the Fourth ofJuly, Shane and Marion dance while Joe watches, his face showing not so muchconcern as recognition of the situation.

Likemany Westerns before and since, "Shane" all comes down to a shootoutin a barroom, although first there is an unusual amount of conversation. Thepeople in the valley are not simple action figures, as they might be today, butstruggle with ideas about their actions. Ryker twice tries to convince Joe togo to work for him, and once tries to hire Shane. Ryker and Wilson have a quietand thoughtful conversation about the potential for violence of Torrey (ElishaCook Jr.), another local farmer. Joe engages the settlers in debates about howto respond to Ryker's threats. The only character without much to say is Wilson(Palance), the famous hired gun from out of town. He has a dozen lines ofdialogue, and exists primarily as a forboding presence. (He arrives in town onfoot, leading his horse--an effective entrance, even if Hollywood lore saysthat Palance at the time was so awkward on horseback that Stevens put him onfoot in desperation.)

Wilsonembodies the older Western principle of might over right. There is a chillingsequence in which Torrey rides into town for a showdown with Wilson, and isshot dead. Stevens orchestrates it with hard-edged reserve, staying almostentirely in long shot, showing Torrey picking his way gingerly across the muddywagon ruts in the road and then walking in the mud parallel to the saloon'swooden porch--a high ground where Wilson's strides match him. Torrey never evengets up onto the porch; he dies, outdrawn, in the mud. It is one of the saddestshooting deaths in any Western, comparable to Keith Carradine's death in RobertAltman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller."

Thewhole movie builds to the inescapable fact that Shane must eventually faceWilson and the other gunmen. If Shane is still alive afterward, he will have toleave town. He can't stay, not simply because he has been "branded"by a killing, but because there is no acceptable resolution for his feelingsfor Marion.

Nowwhy isn't there? Well, he could let Joe go into town and get killed, which iswhat Joe wants to do. That would leave Marion and Joey in need of a man. ButShane knocks Joe out to prevent that. He likes Joe too much, perhaps. Or doeshe? Shane is so quiet, so inward, so narcissistic in his silent withdrawingfrom ordinary exchanges, that he always seems to be playing a role. A role in whichhe withholds his violent abilities as long as he can, and then places himselfin a situation where he is condemned to use them, after which he will ride on,lonely, to the next town. He has . . . issues.

Astory depends on who is telling it. "Shane" is told from the point ofview of the town and of the boy, who famously cries "Shane! Shane! Comeback!" in the closing scene. If we were to follow Shane from town to town,I suspect we would find ritual reenactments of the pattern he's trapped in.Notice that after stopping for a drink of water at Joe's place, he's all set toleave when Ryker's men ride up. That's when he interests himself in anotherman's quarrel, introduces himself as "a friend," displays his six-gunand essentially chooses to get involved in a scenario that's none of hisbusiness and will lead to an ending we suspect he's seen many times before.

Whydoes he do this? There is a little of the samurai in him, and the medievalknight. He has a code. And yet--there'ssomethingelsesuggested by hisbehavior, his personality, his whole tone. Here is a man tough enough to handleany threat and handsome enough to win the heart of almost any woman. Why doeshe present himself as a weakling? Why is he without a woman? There must be adeep current of fear, enlivened by masochism. Is he afraid of women? Maybe.Does he deliberately lead men to think they can manhandle him, and then killthem? Manifestly. Does he do this out of bravery and courage, and because hebelieves in doing the right thing? That is the conventional answer. Does healso do it because it expresses some deep need or yearning? A real possibility."Shane" never says, and maybe never knows. Shane wears a white hatand Palance wears a black hat, but the buried psychology of this movie is amottled, uneasy, fascinating gray.

Shane (1953) is a timeless, classic western tale - a very familiar and highly regarded seminal western and the most successful Western of the 1950s. The film's rich color cinematography captures the beautiful environment of the legendary frontier (filmed on location in Jackson Hole, Wyoming) with its gray-blue Grand Tetons as a backdrop.

The screenplay was based on Jack Schaefer's successful 1949 book of the same name. The film received six Academy Awards nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Brandon de Wilde), Best Supporting Actor (Jack Palance), Best Director, Best Screenplay (by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.), and Best Color Cinematography, and won its sole Oscar award for photographer Loyal Griggs. Unbelievably, star Alan Ladd in probably his best known and realized performance, was un-nominated. Director/actor Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider (1985) paid homage to Stevens' film with a similar storyline.

Veteran director/producer George Stevens' film is often considered the second film of his "American trilogy," positioned between A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956). Stevens self-consciously fashioned this simple western into a wide-screen, Technicolored panoramic masterpiece to create a symbolic myth: the age-old story of the duel between good and evil, the advent of civilization (with families, law and order, and homesteaders) and progress into the wilderness (a world of roaming cattlemen, lawless gunslingers, and loners on horseback), a land-dispute conflict between a homesteader and cattle baron, and the coming of age of a young boy. The film is dotted with classic sequences - the uprooting of the stubborn stump in the yard, Torrey's murder in the muddy street and his hilltop funeral, and the climactic finale.

The straight-forward narrative is told and seen mostly through the eyes of the young impressionable hero, who idolizes a mysterious, gunslinging hero from the wilderness who appears from nowhere - a man without a past or a future. The theme song of the film "The Call of the Faraway Hills" parallels the backdrop of the entire story. To heighten the effects of the violence (numerous fistfights and gunfights) and provide a striking contrast to the taciturn silence of the former gunslinger, director Stevens magnified the sounds of punches and gunshots on the soundtrack, but he never glorified violence for its own sake.

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