When I saw ''Shane'' for the first time, I was immediately really impressed how beautiful and powerful this movie (from 1953!) was. The amazing camerawork, editing, and beautiful scenery. The powerful gunshots (like Shane shows Joey how to shoot) and shootings (Jack Palance kills Elisha Cook Jr. and the last shootout scene) are incredible, and way ahead of its time. One of the most beautiful Westerns ever made! Greetings from The Netherlands.
This is another example of a Western that can be really engaging with very minimal shootout scenes. The characters are the main event. That's not to say I don't enjoy Westerns with multiple shootout scenes, but it can work both ways.
Jack Palance, the man in black, is one of the great bad guys. A very underrated actor, he made great films like western Monte Walsh, film noir Sudden Fear and great war drama Attack!. A bunch of others. City Slickers, you might of heard of. The great Ben Johnson is Chris. Another underrated actor. He won sn academy award for The Last Picture Show. A real cowboy, he made a huge mark on the genre in a quiet, unassuming way. He gave one of the great Oscar acceptance speeches of all time. He wasn't cut out for the Hollywood high life, too normal. Wagonmaster is a fine lead for him in a John Ford film.
Shane is not only one of the very best of the classic westerns, it's a very special film in any genre. Exceptional moviemaking : a great screenplay, an incredible cast, beautiful photography and locations, the score, and an old-fashioned story presented in a straight forward, unhurried manner. A timeless masterpiece. Thanks for taking the time to watch and react to it.
The person you recognized was Ben Johnson. He was originally part of what was called John Ford's Stock Company. A collection of actors that Ford would cast in his movies. He started as a horse wrangler and was soon acting.
He's got a great and distinct voice. He actually looks a little like Daryl from "The Walking Dead" too. I enjoy his performances. He had a nice redemptive arc in this film.
"Shane. Shane! Come back! Bye, Shane." Emotional Damage! 😭 Fun Fact: Over the years, the film was spawned many imitations of which Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider (1985) is probably the closest. Problem Child Fact: Child actor Brandon De Wilde was a terror during filming, jumping in mud when others walked past, making faces at Alan Ladd if the two were playing a tender scene and wandering off when his scene was called. De Wilde was egged on by Jean Arthur, who had taken a liking to him. Gun Enthusiast Fact: Shane's (Alan Ladd) gun is a nickel-plated Colt 1873 Single Action Army revolver with a 7 & 1/2 inch barrel and ivory grips with carved horse heads, in either .44 or .45 caliber. It is carried in a "Mexican" double-loop holster on a belt decorated with numerous silver open-starburst conchos. Dog Wrangler Fact: In the funeral scene, the dog consistently refused to look into the grave. Finally, director George Stevens had the dog's trainer lie down in the bottom of the grave, and the dog played his part ably. The coffin, loaded with rocks for appropriate effect, was then lowered into the grave, but when the harmonica player began to play "Dixie" spontaneously, the crew was so moved by the scene that they began shoveling dirt into the grave before remembering that a live person was still down there. Horse Wangler Fact: Jack Palance had problems with his horse during filming. When Shane (Alan Ladd) and Jack first look each other over at the Starrett Ranch, Palance was supposed to dismount for a minute, then remount his horse. He could not remount, so the director had Jack dismount his horse slowly, then ran the film in reverse for the remount. According to the commentary on the DVD, during the scene where Shane and Joe (Van Heflin) are fighting in the corral, the tied horses were supposed to panic. To instill hysteria in the horses, director George Stevens had two men dressed in bear costumes to scare them.
Great reaction! When George Stevens returned from WW2 he was determined to put more grit in his films after the horrors he'd seen. So when Elisha Cook Jr gets shot it was 1) deliberately done in muck, and 2) Cook was yanked back on wires to show what guns REALLY do. A superb film with so many layers: the relationships between Shane and Marian, Joey, and Starrett; the era of the cattle baron and gunfighter are near an end; and, yeah, one of the best barfights EVER!
Congratulations on your 100'th reaction. "Shane" ia one of the best westerns. Outstanding performances by all, and I think it is Alan Ladd's best performance.
Thanks so much and also for the continued support. Here's to another 100! As to the film, the characters definitely make it. Some really good performances as you mentioned.
I'll never forget Jack Palance in this one. He had murder written over every inch of him -- I've never seen an actor look that deadly -- before or since.
I really love that scene where the gang of bad guys ride in to confront the good guy on his ranch at night. As the two sides talk and threaten each other, the two gunmen immediately recognize each other for what they are. They just look each other up and down, while the others talk - each knowing that they are going to have to face the other, eventually. Quiet, but effective.
Yes, Ben Johnson was in that Ford trilogy, popped up as guest star in a lot of 1960s tv westerns. Last big role might have been as the cop (Melvin Purvis) who tracks down Dillinger (Warren Oates), 1973.
I have always been impressed with how realistic (which is to say, dirty and gritty) this movie looked for 1953. Most westerns of this era were very clean and civilized looking. The saloon in a John Wayne movie, for example (at least the kind with dancing girls), would have the latest Victorian decor, with fancy lace curtains, hurricane lamps, and new paint. Here, the saloon (along with all the other buildings) looked like they were homemade (out of barn wood) and shoddy, like things really were out on the frontier. And the way the Southern guy was gunned down in the street, landing face down in the mud. Very realistic for a movie of that time.
Definitely in my top 10 most recommended Westerns and it's one I say, See this one first before watching any other Western along with Stagecoach (1939). Cheers on the 100th. 📣
Did you notice that Shane calls Joey "Jimmy" once in his farewell? Is it an homage to the star already on the ground in "High Noon" when Will Kane tosses away his badge at the end? By the way, there was a short-lived (seventeen episodes) "Shane" TV series in 1966. Marian is a widow and she lives with her father-in-law and her son. Highly recommended: Jack Schaefer's 1949 source novel, which the Library of America has collected in a volume with Alan LeMay's *Searchers,* Walter Van Tilburg Clark's *Ox-Bow Incident* and Oakley Hall's *Warlock.*
Great reaction brother! That bar brawl with Shane and Joe vs everybody was really well directed. It felt like a real fight and they just shot it 😂. It’s sacrilege to say but I wonder what a modern remake of Shane would be like. I think it would be like 3:10 to Yuma, where the remake was heavily more graphic in violence, but still great.
One Foot in Hell is another one of Alan Ladd’s must see westerns. It’s probably the most interesting psychological film I’ve ever seen. I highly recommend it.
Gutman in "The Maltese Falcon" likes talking to a man who likes to talk. He would have invited Shane to come with him to Istanbul. (As he did with Sam Spade, who refused. Strangely, in the second version of "The Maltese Falcon," 1936's "Satan Met a Lady," Sam Spade has another name...and it's Ted Shane.)
Great movie, I enjoyed your reaction. I've never seen a character radiate menace the way Jack Palance's Wilson does in this movie. Two tiny details he does that I love are how he raises and holds his gun after he kills Torrey and then how he moves the coffee pot out of the way right before the final gunfight. Palance was great in Attack and was also in one of the best versions of Jekyll and Hyde. His Hyde was terrifying. Another one I like, though many find quite bad, is The Big Knife. It was based on a Clifford Odets play and has very stylized dialogue and high-pitched emotions. I think it works though, again, many hate it. The last I checked, the entire movie was on YT with a couple different uploads. Finally, a word on Emile Meyer, who played Ryker (a not entirely unreasonable and evil character; he had something of a point). Largely forgotten now, Meyer had significant roles in two other classics. He was, of all things, a kindly priest in Kubrick's Paths of Glory and as a corrupt cop in Sweet Smell of Success. Both of those are worth watching and reacting to. I rate Tony Curtis' performance in SSoS as one of the best and most perfect in film history.
Great reaction brother! That bar brawl with Shane and Joe vs everybody was really well directed. It felt like a real fight and they just shot it 😂. It’s sacrilege to say but I wonder what a modern remake of Shane would be like. I think it would be like 3:10 to Yuma, where the remake was heavily more graphic in violence, but still great. Congrats on 100 reactions!
Great reaction!!! One of the other commenters hit the nail right on the head: this is "a timeless masterpiece." I watched a very good western film for the first time last week: Blood on the Moon (1948). It was directed by Robert Wise and starred Robert Mitchum, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Preston, Phyllis Thaxter and Walter Brennan. If you get a chance, it's well worth a viewing, even if you have to do it on your own and not for RU-vid.
My Fav. Actress ever Jean Arthur, she's 50 here, played in Mr. Deeds goes to Town with Gary Cooper (yes the Original Mr. Deeds is like 100 times better than the remake). Shane is in my top 5 Westerns, its realism over modern fake Westerns. Stagecoach, Shane, Rio Bravo, Red River and the Mag. 7 are in my top tier. P.S. anytime I see those shoot-em-up Westerns, they are entertaining, just not realistic to me. I want to see a real account about the old west, Tombstone is fake as hell. By the way Stonewall was the Gunsel in the Maltese Falcon and little Jonesy in the Big Sleep.
They are like the current noir movies set in the 30s and 40s. They are fake, even a good movie like "L.A. Confidential" does not convey any feeling of the atmosphere of that time. Because simply the dialogues and the poise belonged to them.. .and that's gone.
@@jesusfernandezgarcia9449 True, the last two great Neo Noirs were early to mid 70s, Chinatown and The Long Goodbye, since then L.A. Confidential was pretty good but it lacked the melancholy feel of a great noir. Open Range was pretty good, but I thought it got a little too bogged down in the romance portion, but that's just taste I guess. I guess my last Western that I just totally loved was Pale Rider.
Contemporary attempts at Westerns and Noir are so visibly ironic " look at us making Westerns and noirs". It becomes tedious, they can only deconstruct old genres, but that can only be done once. Duvall has made three good attempts, at echoing the western spirit: Lonesome Dove, Open Range and Broken Trail. I'm happy with those. Now, they tend to call anything with a dark storyline Noir. Noir was very specific to the 1940s, that existential awareness is lost.
"Red River" was a brilliant watch. One of my favourites of John Wayne. I didn't recognise the actor from "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Big Sleep". Nice spot.
Ben Johnson was in a ton of Westerns and even won an Academy Award for the Last Picture Show. He was a true cowboy, too, winning the Rodeo Championship as well. To see him at his best watch a John Ford film -- which he once said was his favorite -- called Wagonmaster. This is a great movie that belongs on any Top Ten list of Westerns. Victor Young did the beautiful musical score for Shane as well as the third of the Cavalry Trilogy, Rio Grande.
He never really thought of himself as an actor. He preferred to have fewer lines and just hang out. When Peter Bogdonavich wanted him for The Last Picture Show he politely declined. When John Ford asked him as a favor to take the role he accepted, but only if Bogdonavich let him edit the curse words out of his lines.@@IrishGuyReacts
2 films to consider seeing, The Culpepper Cattle Company and Bad Company staring a very young Jeff Bridges (1972). Both films have the Lonesome Dove grit and story telling.
Omg, I remember The Culpepper Cattle Company being a “top companion feature” to whatever we were watching at the drive-in in ‘72! But we were all exhausted from the feature, so we didn’t stay.
@@Divamarja_CA Stars Gary Grimes (The Summer of 42) and Bo Hopkins (The Wild Bunch) with a slew of actors who appeared in a load of westerns from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.
Ryker actually makes a pretty good case for the cattlemen. This was a real battle in many of the western states. Billy the Kid made his name in the Lincoln County Wars in New Mexico over just this issue, as did many hired guns.
I thought that when I was watching it. It was an interesting moment where you partly saw where the villain was coming from. Added depth to the narrative.
the sounds of the gunshots,stevens said he shot a howitzer or cannon into a trash can to give it a loud effect. jack schaefer the author of SHANE,said people asked him how he liked the film he said it was alright except for that runt,meaning ladd who was about 5'5to 5'6.schaefer said he pictured george raft in the role because in the book SHANE was dark and deadly unlike fair haired ladd.montgomery cluift was supposed to be shane but turned it down.wiiliam holden was supposed to be joe starrett and katherine hepburn as marion but both turned it down or were not available(thank god)critics always remarked that shane was dying or going to die going over the hill at the end.
nominated for BEST PICTURE,DIRECTOR,SCREENPLAY,BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR(JACK PALANCE and BRANDON DE WILDE)SOUND,CINEMATOGRAPHY...LOYAL GRIGGS only is the one that got the oscar for the cinematography.,,and ladd didnt even get nominated(it was said studio politics had something to do with it because ladd a PARAMOUNT contract star was leaving the studio at this time,this was filmed in 1951 and wasnt released till 1953 at which time ladd was at WARNER BROS.PARAMOUNT was pushing william holden a reliable paramount star for an oscar for the studios STALAG 17 1953 for holden got an oscar for best actor.
I didn't find Alan Ladd very convincing as a western character, but Jack Palance was completely plausible. The film was shot in near Jackson Wyoming, which is very near Grand Teton National Park and not far from Yellowstone. You can see the Tetons in some of the shots.
Winner of the 1971 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Sam the Lion in "The Last Picture Show." (A wonderful, wonderful movie.)
P.S. Little Joey (Brendan DeWilde) will co-star as a 20 something in a Great John Wayne movie "IN HARM'S WAY" as his estranged son. This WW2 all star movie has my highest recommendation. For whatever that's worth. I think you will truly love it.
Really appreciate the suggestion. I must watch some more of Wayne's movies outside the Western Genre too. Only one I've watched so far is "The Quiet Man".
20:39 ah you're a good Catholic boy! (Protestants have one extra line at the end.) Dara Ó Briain did a routine questioning why people got upset about "mixed" marriages when in a mass that lasts an hour or more the *only difference* between both sides was this one extra line.
Filmed in teh Grand Teton mountains in Wyoming. Beautiful landscapes. Jean Arthur is GOAT. The sound is fantastic. The director George Stevens filmed the liberation of the Nazi death camps in WWII. He never made a war movies afterward, except this reprsents his tribute to veteran, imho. That's Ben Johnson, who was n a lot of John Wayne/John Ford westerns and won an Oscar for The Last Picture show.
Would love to visit the area where it was filmed. America has some truly stunning locations. Ben Johnson is an actor I've enjoyed watching in these Westerns.
I worked for a summer in the Tetons after I graduated from high school. Have been back a couple times. There are pictures in bars and restaurants the area from the filming of Shane.
Shane, for my money, is the greatest western of all time. A few others come close... Once Upon a Time in the West, The Searchers, Red River, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which may round out my top five... but Shane is timeless and the themes, western archetypes, and characters are all spot on. I wouldn't say it's a perfect film... Jean Arthur has been used to better effect, and if I'm honest with myself, even though she's a great actress, may have been a bit miscast, but it's nothing to the point of where I think it detracts or really weakens the film much. The pacing is perfect, some great scenes, and it really just embodies the western genre perfectly. Sure, there have been other films out there that have done individual things better... there's been westerns with better dialogue, better gunfights, slightly better cinematography, better writing, and perhaps better acting... but few westerns have completely encapsulated everything that IS the western better than Shane. While it's a film that does nothing perfect... it does 100 things NEAR perfect and it just hits you on a gut level with the heartbreaking ending and rises to an allegory, not only of the dieing West, but also of anything in life where we have something we treasure and value and find that time somehow passes it by into the recesses of our memories and the past... yeah I love it absolutely to death and it's true art in my mind. - AClockworkPeon
Reading all the comments on hear i don't have much to add except its a classic and was very influential on the spaghetti westerns that came ten years later.
It's one of the best, easy top 10. Especially noteworthy in dealing with the sexual tension between Shane and the mom, while keeping it within a family friendly, child's perspective. Shows that early films dealt with issues and it wasn't all peaches and cream fantasy stuff. I admire the respect for the audience in older films. Van Heflin had a tough role to play here, he did a fine job. He subtly shows that he realizes the attraction between Shane and his wife. But the film doesn't have to go into soap opera land to dramatize it further.
Sorry this comment is so late. I think you really nailed the dynamic of the family and Shane. Now as for the cattle men vs.the homesteaders that's a tough one. I can see both sides . both are right and both are wrong. What are your thoughts ? As always GOD BLESS ALL HERE !!!!!!!!
I was thinking it as I was watching it. It really adds great layers and depth to the story in that the villain's point of view is somewhat understandable.
Although not exactly spoiled for me I'd heard various commentators (mostly on western DVD bts and commentary extras) compare scenes in other films to events in Shane. Plus comedian Bill Hicks who did a routine that talked about the Wilson & Torrey shootout (in a rather confused manner that suggested he hadn't seen the film for many many years). Perhaps because i knew plenty of the details beforehand and the film had been hyped quite a bit I found it a little underwhelming when I finally got to see it. I've often though that the more modern film _Open Range_ with Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall is a good counterpoint to this one, because it has the cattlemen as the protagonists who are bullied by some settled farmers. Not sure if you've seen that one yet?
In Open Range the antagonist is the huge rancher, an immigrant from Ireland (Michael Gambon) , who owns not only a massive ranch, but the town and the sheriff in that town. He opposes the Costner and Duvall characters, who are free grazing cattle drivers, that pass through to market.
Sometimes it can be to the detriment of a well loved film where you hear so much hype about it and your expectations are then so high, it can then leave us underwhelmed. I haven't seen "Open Range" yet but definitely intend to watch it.
Warren Beatty tells a funny story... When he was involved in the making of "Bonnie and Clyde," he told his effects people that he wanted the sound of gunfire to be similar to the distinctive blasts in "Shane." So, that's how they did it. Later, during one of the screenings of "Bonnie and Clyde," Beatty was in the audience and wondered why the gunfire didn't sound right. He ran up the booth and the projectionist explained that he had to "fix" the audio because the gunfire sounded off. The projectionist added that "the only other movie he's encountered with sound so bad was 'Shane.'"
Appreciate the suggestions but I've actually seen both of those. "Deliverance" really messes with the head. Feel free to bring more suggestions though.
I saw this a bunch of times on TV when I was a kid. Really enjoyed seeing it again with you and your fresh eyes. As an adult, I can see that, to use modern terminology, one of the big themes here is toxic masculinity vs ideal or democratic masculinity. The former is marked by bullying and force, the latter by cooperativeness and openness to a wider range of gender acceptance (coded here as soda pop). A less rigid understanding of what it means to be a man. To my mind my country (the US) is still struggling with this issue, with so many devoted to the toxic masculinity of our bully in chief. But there is still the democratic side trying to bring down him and his movement. It’s a replay of the struggle between the cattle baron and the sodbusters. In a sense all westerns share the underlying theme of reconciling our untamed past with more civilized times, what is good from that legacy and what should be discarded. The actor that played the kid went on as a young man to star opposite Paul Newman in “Hud,” (1963), a western in a modern setting that deals with some of these same issues. The legacy of toxic masculinity is addressed directly in two more recent films, “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Power of the Dog. ” Both excellent, and both essential viewing to understand the western genre as it is in our own time. Add to that the HBO series “Deadwood,” which takes up the political and economic aspects covered in Shane.
I like your analysis. A very interesting view point. Thanks for the suggestions. I've seen "Brokeback Mountain". "Deadwood" is a TV show I definitely intend to watch.
@bbbrown3408 "Shane" is an old Irish name (far older than this movie) it's the Ulster Irish anglicised form of "John", the Southern equivalent is "Seán".
