shane good or bad essay

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

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

Look a little more carefully and you find that the rider and the farmer's wife feel an attraction for one another. And that Shane is touched by the admiration of young Joey, the son of the farm couple. Bring Freud into the picture and you uncover all sorts of possibilities, as the newcomer dresses in sissy clothes and absorbs insults and punishment from the goons at the saloon, before strapping on his six-gun and proving himself the better man.

It's not that a greater truth lurks in the depths of George Stevens' "Shane" (1953). It's that all of these levels coexist, making the movie more complex than a simple morality play. Yes, on the surface, Shane is the gunfighter who wants to leave his past behind him, who yearns for the sort of 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 to tear down the fences and allow his cattle to roam free. Yes, Shane is the man--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 three men 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 of the best films of 1953. But if it only worked on that level, it would have grown 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.

Ladd was a movie star of below-average stature and strikingly good looks, and for much of his career he worked around both of those attributes in roles where he was photographed to look tough and taller. In "Shane," he is frankly seen 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 into town 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 an open collar that makes him look almost effeminate in contrast to the burly, whiskered gunmen who work for Ryker and live, apparently, in the saloon.

His first visit to the saloon sets up the undercurrent for the whole story. Dressed like a slicker, he orders a soda pop. The cowboys snicker. Calloway ambles over, calling him a "sodbuster" who smells like a pig--a reference to his plowing duties on the farm of Starrett (Van Heflin). Shane asks, "You speaking to me?" Calloway replies, "I don't see nobody else standing there." The confrontation ends with Calloway throwing a drink on Shane's new shirt, while we're wondering if Travis Bickle was a fan of this film.

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

Like many Westerns before and since, "Shane" all comes down to a shootout in a barroom, although first there is an unusual amount of conversation. The people in the valley are not simple action figures, as they might be today, but struggle with ideas about their actions. Ryker twice tries to convince Joe to go to work for him, and once tries to hire Shane. Ryker and Wilson have a quiet and thoughtful conversation about the potential for violence of Torrey (Elisha Cook Jr.), another local farmer. Joe engages the settlers in debates about how to 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 of dialogue, and exists primarily as a forboding presence. (He arrives in town on foot, leading his horse--an effective entrance, even if Hollywood lore says that Palance at the time was so awkward on horseback that Stevens put him on foot in desperation.)

Wilson embodies the older Western principle of might over right. There is a chilling sequence in which Torrey rides into town for a showdown with Wilson, and is shot dead. Stevens orchestrates it with hard-edged reserve, staying almost entirely in long shot, showing Torrey picking his way gingerly across the muddy wagon ruts in the road and then walking in the mud parallel to the saloon's wooden porch--a high ground where Wilson's strides match him. Torrey never even gets up onto the porch; he dies, outdrawn, in the mud. It is one of the saddest shooting deaths in any Western, comparable to Keith Carradine's death in Robert Altman's " McCabe and Mrs. Miller ."

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

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

A story depends on who is telling it. "Shane" is told from the point of view of the town and of the boy, who famously cries "Shane! Shane! Come back!" 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 to leave when Ryker's men ride up. That's when he interests himself in another man's quarrel, introduces himself as "a friend," displays his six-gun and essentially chooses to get involved in a scenario that's none of his business and will lead to an ending we suspect he's seen many times before.

Why does he do this? There is a little of the samurai in him, and the medieval knight. He has a code. And yet--there's something else suggested by his behavior, his personality, his whole tone. Here is a man tough enough to handle any threat and handsome enough to win the heart of almost any woman. Why does he present himself as a weakling? Why is he without a woman? There must be a deep 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 kill them? Manifestly. Does he do this out of bravery and courage, and because he believes in doing the right thing? That is the conventional answer. Does he also do it because it expresses some deep need or yearning? A real possibility. "Shane" never says, and maybe never knows. Shane wears a white hat and Palance wears a black hat, but the buried psychology of this movie is a mottled, uneasy, fascinating gray.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Now playing

Brian Tallerico

Simon Abrams

Peyton Robinson

In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon

Clint worthington.

Kung Fu Panda 4

Christy lemire, film credits.

Shane (1953)

118 minutes

Latest blog posts

A Poet of an Actor: Louis Gossett, Jr. (1936-2024)

Why I Love Ebertfest: A Movie Lover's Dream

Adam Wingard Focuses on the Monsters

Colin Farrell Shines In Apple TV+’s Refined and Genre-Bending Sugar

Film review: Shane (1953)

‘A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that.’ These are words to live by. These are words that express a personal code for doing good deeds in the world, according to the hero of George Stevens’ great 1953 Western Shane.

We first see this lone hero (Alan Ladd) from a distance, captured in a long shot, his pearl-handled gun gleaming in its holster, riding down into a valley, the Grand Tetons (the highest mountain range in Northwest Wyoming) rising majestically behind him. It’s a striking opening scene. He moves slowly, like a golden-haired knight in fringed buckskin, making his way into the film and into our consciousness.

We see him as Little Joey Starrett (Brandon de Wilde) sees him. Joey has his unloaded rifle trained on a deer when he spots the man riding towards the family farm. He calls out to his father, Joe (Van Heflin), ‘Somebody’s comin’, Pa.’ To which Pa replies, ‘Well, let him come.’ Already there is an air of anticipation and mystery around this stranger and Joey’s immediately in awe, gripped by the fever of hero worship that will last the film’s entirety.

The man quietly asks if he can pass through their property. ‘Call me Shane’ he says, and endears himself further to the boy, identifying his shyness and attentiveness as admirable qualities: ‘I like a man who watches things go on around. It means he’ll make his mark someday.’ But Shane’s also jumpy. He has a history with that gun slung to his side. He doesn’t say what, but we know there’s something because of the speed with which he draws when Joey, showing off, cocks his rifle. When Joey asks, ‘Bet you can shoot … Can’t you?’ Shane replies, ‘Little bit,’ playing down his prowess. Joe’s wife, Marian (Jean Arthur) watches all this through the window inside their log cabin.

Joe and Marian are homesteaders in Wyoming, building a farm and a life for themselves in the state’s wide, flat plains; Shane’s a drifter, just passing through, bound some place he’s never been. But this time he’s going to have to rest for a bit. He’s immediately caught up in the war being waged between the cow ranchers, led by Rufus Ryker (Emile Meyer) against the farmers, or ‘sodbusters’, as they are insolently called. Ryker wants their land so his cattle can roam freely; the homesteaders want their little claim and to be left alone to work it. Ryker and some men come to visit and the tense violent confrontation that ensues allows Shane’s cool demeanor a chance to shine. There will be more trouble throughout the film and Shane, like a samurai, will be ready for it. Joe is impressed enough to ask him to stay – not to fight his battles for him but to help him work the land.

There is a quiet intensity to these well paced, opening scenes in Stevens’ film. They introduce the film’s major characters and tell us almost everything we need to know about them. Shane enters the landscape of the film a lone ronin with little personal backstory (what we come to know is only ever implied), in the tradition of Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo (1961) but without the comedy. We don’t know what motivates Shane’s actions other than what his actions themselves tell us about the code he lives by. He comes into the lives of the Starrett family and the other homesteaders like a warrior for hire, ready to take on their cause because it is an honest and good one. And he fights for himself – because he’s looking to be redeemed.

Directed by Stevens between A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956), Shane ,like these other major films, can also be seen as an exploration of the great symbolic myths of America. Here we have the duel between good and evil played out against the birth of the American West, the desire for community and family in conflict with individualism and greed. Shane rides into a lawless place (the law, we repeatedly hear, is many miles away, too far to come when there’s trouble) to create his own sense of right and order. It’s an archetypal story of frontier heroism, played out many years later in Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider (1985), which has a very similar plot and ending.

Shot on location in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the film’s cinematography is wide and rich. Stevens’ film is made up of mostly long and medium shots that locate his characters in a very specific space. Shane was the first film to be projected in a flat widescreen format – the panoramic screen invented by Paramount and installed at Radio City Music Hall for the film’s premiere. The screen was a perfect vehicle for such a cinematic film. The memorable score by Victor Young matches each sequence. In addition, Stevens made significant innovations in sound editing, especially with the explosive impact of gunfire.

Shane is soft-spoken and self-possessed and each member of the Starrett family finds themselves drawn to him. But Joey in particular is mesmerized by Shane’s gun belt despite Stevens making a point of having Shane remove it when he takes up residence in the Starrett barn. On or off, Shane’s ‘six shooter’ is the film’s defining symbol. When he isn’t wearing it he’s able to indulge in the quiet domesticity he seems to crave. Sitting down to eat with the Starrett’s for the first time he’s clearly at ease. After dinner, he goes outside and chops wood without being asked. He’s expressing his gratitude and revealing a commitment to being a good man.

Shane’s just as handy using his hands as a weapon. The extraordinary extended fight sequence at the saloon, when he’s called upon to defend the sodbusters honour, has him take on all the men, bare-knuckled. He’s small and scrappy but throws hard punches as Joey looks on, in awe, while eating a candy cane.

Sensing how far Joey has fallen (‘I love him almost as much as I love Pa’) perhaps because she’s also fallen just as hard (the unspoken desire between Shane and Marian is worthy of an essay of its own), Marian warns Shane, ‘Guns aren’t going to be my boys life.’ Shane makes the distinction between good and bad men and good and bad guns; that a gun is a tool like any other. Shane takes pride in showing restraint. But other characters equate gun slinging with murder and in the end that’s all it can be.

Shane’s honesty about who he is and what he is there to do determines the film’s outcome. He is a good man among bad men. And by the time he saddles up and rides into town for the film’s final showdown with the hired gunslinger, Jack Wilson (Jack Palance) he has accepted that the blood of past killings remains with him:

‘ A man has to be what he is, Joey. You can’t break the mould. I tried it and it didn’t work for me … there’s no living with, with a killing. There’s no going back from it. Right or wrong, it’s a brand, a brand that sticks. There’s no going back.’

So Shane can’t stay still, he has to keep moving forward. It’s the only honest way he can escape it. We don’t know where Shane has come from and we don’t know where he is riding off to or if he’ll even survive his wounds when he leaves Joey calling after him, famously, ‘Shane! Come back!’ All we know is he has left his mark on these people and he’s given them the chance to live even better lives than his.

Shane screened  as part of  ACMI’s Samurai Cinema season .

Film Review – Locke (2014)

You may also like, film review: blancanieves (2012), film review: all eyez on me (2017), film review: alvin and the chipmunks: the road chip (2015), leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

More Stories

Miff 2014: concrete night (2013).

Search form

Members Login

You are here

Samuel Goldwyn Theatre 8949 Wilshire Boulevard Beverly Hills, CA 90211

A 60TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING OF A NEW DIGITAL RESTORATION, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAMES MANGOLD

A PART OF THE GEORGE STEVENS LECTURE SERIES

“A gun is a tool, Marion, no better or no worse than any other tool, an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that.” – Shane

“Shane” is a classic western that has influenced numerous directors, including Warren Beatty and Woody Allen, who called “Shane” one of his favorite American films and praised its “poetry and elegant flow.”

Based on Jack Schaefer’s successful 1949 novel, the film recounts the age-old story of the duel between good and evil through the eyes of Joey (Brandon De Wilde), an impressionable young boy who idolizes a mysterious gunslinger. Shane (Alan Ladd), the man without a past or a future, inserts himself into the battle over land being waged between homesteaders and a cattle baron, and in the process, transforms a beleaguered town. Van Heflin and Jean Arthur co-star as Joey’s parents, who find their lives deeply affected by Shane.

Considered by Allen to be veteran producer-director George Stevens’s masterpiece, “Shane” marked Stevens’s first foray into color. Shot on location near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the film’s rich Technicolor cinematography captures the panorama of the frontier during a crucial moment in Western mythology, when civilization was encroaching on the seemingly endless wilderness.

Screened courtesy of Paramount Pictures. 118 minutes.

Academy Award winner: Color Cinematography (Loyal Griggs)

Academy Award nominee: Best Motion Picture, Actor in a Supporting Role (Brandon De Wilde and Jack Palance), Directing (George Stevens) and Writing – Screenplay (A. B. Guthrie, Jr.)

by Jack Schaefer

Shane analysis.

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by Timothy Sexton

The attraction to the mysterious man named Shane is shared equally by the novel’s narrator and parents and those who are reading his recollection. That attraction seems unquantifiable except as it relates to loyalty, but loyalty alone hardly seems to justify feelings toward Shane that sometimes seems to verge almost into the realm of spiritual devotion. The opening scene of the novel portrays the arrival of a figure who hardly seems likely to invest such devotion.

Shane is described as a man of average build—almost frail—wearing worn patchwork clothing about whom there was nothing that seemed immediately remarkable or out of the ordinary. Despite this, something about the mysterious stranger on horseback sent a chill down the spine of the young boy the narrator was at the time. There is in those opening paragraphs something that would be recreated in the opening scene of a made-for-TV movie intended as a pilot for a series in the early 1970’s set at a traffic light in the city.

Guy in station wagon : Taking a trip?

Guy on motorcycle : Yeah.

Guy in station wagon : Where to?

Guy on motorcycle : Oh, I don't know. Wherever I end up I guess.

Guy in station wagon : Man, I wish I was you.

The movie and TV show was titled Then Came Bronson and the guy on the motorcycle was Bronson, a not particularly remarkable man who had just decided to quit his job and travel by bike around the country in an existential search for meaning and identity. More than a few reviewers pointed out the symbolic connection between straddling a Harley-Davidson and a straddling a horse and this opening scene in particular situated his status as a loner standing outside the mainstream by having the guy who who sees in Bronson something enigmatic driving that 1960’s emblem of conformity, the homestead on the highway: the station wagon. No room is given nor necessary to question why station wagon guy would wish to be Bronson despite knowing nothing about him and seeing nothing particularly outstanding there beside him at the stoplight.

Bronson was understood to be the contemporary incarnation of the existential drifter who briefly enters the lives of the conformists necessary for creating the stability that allows society to grow and the wilderness to be civilized. The story of Shane that Bob Starrett recalls so vividly from a position of maturity decades after the events of the narrative is one that has become an especially common trope on television where each week can present a new adventure. Bronson is far from the only latter-day Shane to come and affect change in the lives of strangers and then leave just as mysteriously. The existential drifter has reappeared in the days of the Old West as a martial arts master named Caine in Kung-Fu and in the movies he reappeared as The Man with No Name .

Shane is the iconic model for the template of the modern folk hero of whom folks are fond of asking “Who was that mysterious stranger?” He does not set out to deliver justice, but if called upon that is what he will do. In this way, Shane and his offspring differ from the Lone Ranger or Superman. In fact, his lack of any particularly remarkable attributes also means that Doctor Who cannot be considered progeny as a result of his control over the TARDIS, but Sam Beckett’s utter inability to control his quantum leaps through time and space can be considered a latter-day Shane. The unifying aspect of the Shane archetype apart from his seeming ordinariness is that he transforms the lives of good people for the better and then moves on. And that quality is also what makes his mysterious quality so attractive.

Update this section!

You can help us out by revising, improving and updating this section.

After you claim a section you’ll have 24 hours to send in a draft. An editor will review the submission and either publish your submission or provide feedback.

Shane Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Shane is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Why did Shane decide to remain with the starretts

Shane is very much like Joe. Joe Starrett is not mythic figure seeking redemption; he is merely a great father, great husband, great friend and devoted to doing his part to extend the frontier. Within that simplicity there is genuine heroism,...

What actions of Shane make him seem mystery’s to the family

An aura of mystery hangs over Shane throughout the narrative, creating an obstacle to the reader or the characters ever getting to know him. In terms of the real life job creative writing, Shane is definitely worth an A-plus because the real...

How did Mariana show her support for her husband

Mariana had feelings for both Shane and Joe. She supports them in much the same way. She cooks for them and offers her tender heart to both.

Study Guide for Shane

Shane study guide contains a biography of Jack Schaefer, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Shane
• Shane Summary
• Character List

Essays for Shane

Shane essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Shane by Jack Schaefer.

• A Responsible Western Hero
• Shane: The Loyal Gunman
• Unforgiven: A Revisionist Shane

Wikipedia Entries for Shane

• Introduction
• Critical reception