Word: shane
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Filmed largely around Jackson Hole, Wyo., Shane bulges with authentic sights & sounds. As the yarn plunges forward scene after scene hints at the pleasures and hardships of frontier life: homesteaders dancing and setting off homemade explosives at a July 4 party; bloody fistfighting in a saloon; little girls solemnly watching a sow with her sucklings; the ring of hand axes against a stump; tumbleweed brushing the legs of jittery horses; a harmonica solo of taps as a pine coffin is lowered into a hilltop grave Without recourse to tricky 3-D photography and Polaroid glasses, Stevens, with ordinary Technicolor camera...
...Heflin as the hard-working homesteader, Jean Arthur as his wife and Brandon de Wilde as their young son who idolizes Shane, make the most of their roles. As hard-riding, straight-shooting Shane, Alan Ladd is the personification of 11 strong silent western heroes. He is larger than life, more heroic than legend, the kind of man who is feared by men and loved by women, children and dogs. But he is not the sort to take advantage of the affections of a faithful wife and a small boy. As Brandon de Wilde gazes adoringly after him, he mounts...
...Director Stevens has put it together, Shane adds up to something more than the sum of its individual parts, it almost rises above its stock material to become a sort of celluloid symphony of six-shooters and the wide open spaces...
...stubborn seeker after realism Stevens relies heavily on a "reflective technique," i.e., an actor's reaction to a line or situation. At times he resorts to trickery to get the proper reaction. On Shane one old standby worked perfectly with Villain Jack Palance, who seemed unable to turn on the right expression of amused contempt in one scene. Actor Elisha Cook Jr. had an angry line: "You're a no-good, lying Yankee!" Palance's facial expression earned too much contempt and not enough amusement. Finally, Stevens took Cook aside for a whispered moment. When the camera...
...just brought in such a sure-fire moneymaker as Shane (cost of the picture: $3,100,000), Stevens last week found himself, by a curious Hollywood paradox, without a job. Shane was his last picture for Paramount, which like most companies, likes to have more say in a project than Stevens is willing to permit. I don't think [big companies] see a motion picture for what it's worth. They see it only in terms of product . . . They don't consider what an attraction can be or should be [but] keep looking for assurances of having...