How Shane captured the shifting mood of postwar… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

How Shane cap­tured the shift­ing mood of post­war America

27 Apr 2016

Rugged mountain range with snow-capped peaks, wooden cabin in foreground, people exploring the vast, golden landscape.
Rugged mountain range with snow-capped peaks, wooden cabin in foreground, people exploring the vast, golden landscape.
Alan Ladd’s mys­te­ri­ous stranger in town fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the way audi­ences believed in heroes.

Few west­erns are more loved than George Stevens’ 1953 clas­sic Shane. Its rep­u­ta­tion as one of the genre’s great­est entries remains intact in spite of shift­ing tastes over the years, with enthu­si­asts as unlike­ly as Woody Allen. Occu­py­ing a curi­ous posi­tion with­in Amer­i­can cul­ture of the ear­ly 50s, it’s a loose pre­cur­sor to the well­spring of psy­cho­log­i­cal west­erns’ of the com­ing decade, the sub­ject for a new May sea­son at BFI South­bank. The Psy­cho­log­i­cal West­ern’ pro­gramme focus­es on a moment in post-war cul­ture when the horse opera had trans­formed into some­thing more com­plex and ambiguous.

The sto­ry con­cerns the strug­gle between hon­est, hard­work­ing home­stead­ers and the wealthy, bul­ly­ing ranch­ers who want to claim land for their own. Shane is Alan Ladd’s steady, hero­ic and mys­te­ri­ous stranger in town, who even­tu­al­ly comes to help the home­stead­ers to retain their land. The panoram­ic beau­ty of the moun­tains and plains of Wyoming offer an expan­sive, myth­ic vision of the Amer­i­can West. Accord­ing­ly, Shane has most of the expect­ed ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed to the genre; the arche­typ­al wan­der­ing cow­boy hero, the black ver­sus white hat sym­bol­ism and the embat­tled, hardy com­mu­ni­ty of set­tlers prepar­ing for a show­down. Stevens pits rugged Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism against self-inter­est­ed greed. Nat­u­ral­ly, the lit­tle guys suc­ceed, and at great sac­ri­fice to the mys­te­ri­ous gun­slinger – the most stri­dent­ly and brave­ly indi­vid­ual of them all.

Shane remains sto­ic and peace­ful in the face of humil­i­a­tion by ranch­er goons – all calm, mas­cu­line grace and cool blond right­eous­ness. But when test­ed, he comes first to the fight. How­ev­er gen­tle a man he may be, Shane is a born wan­der­er and a gun­slinger with a shady past. At the start of the film, Ladd becomes a farm­hand to a home­stead­er with a small fam­i­ly. The young boy (Bran­don DeWil­de) idolis­es him, and a strong, unspo­ken attrac­tion grows between the pio­neer wife (Jean Arthur) and our hero. This fam­i­ly dynam­ic – a hap­py, lov­ing one into which polite inter­lop­er Shane is thrust – is the real crux of the film. There’s an uneasy poten­tial for this intrud­er to steal the role of the boy’s father.

Shane has every oppor­tu­ni­ty to let his friend ride off to die at the ranch­ers’ hands, but he’s too noble to take advan­tage. Instead, he takes the man’s place at the show­down, pro­tect­ing and restor­ing the fam­i­ly dynam­ic he’s inter­rupt­ed by going off alone to the fight. He is a will­ing out­cast from the fam­i­ly home, des­tined to wan­der the dusty plains – much like Ethan Edwards in The Searchers.

It seems like some­thing in the Amer­i­can spir­it had changed since the tumult of the pre­vi­ous decade. Amer­i­cans could still believe in heroes, amid the pros­per­i­ty of the post­war era – audi­ences had not relin­quished them as sul­len­ly and cyn­i­cal­ly as they lat­er did. But nor could they believe in quite the same way. Shane can’t be as sim­ple and duti­ful as tra­di­tion­al movie heroes once were, and it’s not as cer­tain he’ll win. If he does tri­umph, it may come at great cost.

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing that the tagline for the film goes There nev­er was a man like Shane’. As he slips away towards the hori­zon, mor­tal­ly wound­ed, we sense that there are few of his kind left – and in truth, audi­ences would see few­er of them as the genre rolled into dark­er ter­ri­to­ry. He may be a roman­tic anti­hero, but only as long as you whis­per the anti’. George Stevens had emerged from his wartime news­reel ser­vice a changed man. Per­haps he thought that Shane was just too good for this world – even Hollywood’s ver­sion of it.

Ride Lone­some: The Psy­cho­log­i­cal West­ern’ runs through­out may. For more info vis­it bfi​.org​.uk

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