Resuming his career after WW2, George Stevens assumed the mantle of Hollywood’s most serious producer-director. His ‘super-western’ is a beautiful piece of filmmaking with an optimistic view of American virtues in conflict. It’s a visual delight, and a genre throwback to unrealistic fights and a hero who may as well be the god of Pioneer justice. Alan Ladd, Van Heflin and Jean Arthur star, and Jack Palance makes a huge impact as a slimy villain. Kino got the nod to debut the show in 4K Ultra HD, with a transfer that accurately translates its glowing 3-strip Technicolor hues.

Shane
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
KL Studio Classics
1953 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 118 min. / Street Date July 15, 2025 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon De Wilde, Jack Palance, Ben Johnson, Edgar Buchanan, Emile Meyer, Elisha Cook Jr., Douglas Spencer, John Dierkes, Ellen Corby, Paul McVey, Nancy Kulp, Beverly Washburn.
Cinematography: Loyal Griggs
Art Directors: Al Pereira, Walter H. Tyler
Costumes: Edith Head
Film Editors: William Hornbeck, Tom McAdoo
Music Composer: Victor Young
Screenplay by A.B. Guthrie Jr. from the book by Jack Schaefer additional dialogue by Jack Sher
Associate Producer: Ivan Moffat
Produced and Directed by George Stevens

Here’s one that promises special potential in 4K Ultra HD … filmed with a 3-Strip Technicolor camera, George Stevens’  Shane ought to be a knockout in the top-end format. Paramount’s Blu-ray release from 12 years ago was a big event, as the movie hadn’t been remastered in a very long time, and old TV prints were not things of beauty. We’re surprised that this iconic Paramount picture wasn’t offered on the house label ‘Paramount Presents.’ But Kino’s release is quality goods, all the way.

Shane has always been a popular western attraction, a real audience-pleaser. Fans may be more gaga for John Wayne pictures or Clint Eastwood’s Italian epics, but this 1953 production is afforded a special respect. Some Paramount executives initially thought it just another Alan Ladd vehicle, but producer-director Stevens gave it a level of quality far above normal Hollywood product. Stevens already was among the most revered filmmakers in town, and one who got his way in all things. Months were spent on location in the Grand Tetons, and the editing process was long and intense. By the time the film was ready for release in 1953 the industry’s conversion to widescreen projection had already begun. Photos of premiere engagements touted a wide screen, even though a ‘matted’ version would mis-frame Stevens’ exacting compositions. Kino has stuck with Stevens’ original flat Academy AR,  1.37:1 .

Screenwriter A.B. Guthrie Jr. also provided the source book for Howard Hawks’ superb frontier western The Big Sky. Guthrie’s screenplay for Shane is adapted from a book by Jack Schaefer. A high plains range war is presented in a realistic fashion, yet the leading character is a gunslinger sourced from pure sagebrush myth. Ten years later, Sam Peckinpah’s revisionist westerns would eulogize obsolete gunmen struggling in a disappearing wild west, but the Eisenhower-era Shane carries very similar dialogue and sentiments.

Taken on its own, the storyline is unexceptional, generic. Wyoming cattlemen Rufus and Morgan Ryker (Emile Meyer & John Dierkes) have fallen on hard times, and thus are infuriated by the influx of homesteaders that they denigrate as sodbusters and pig farmers. Newcomers Fred Lewis, Swede Shipstead and Stonewall Torrey (Edgar Buchanan, Douglas Spencer, Elisha Cook Jr.) rally around the charismatic Joe Starrett (Van Heflin), who is making a new start farming with his wife Marian (Jean Arthur) and son Joey (Brandon De Wilde). The Rykers’ hired gun Chris Calloway (Ben Johnson) fails to intimidate Starrett, so Ryker sends for the black-clad, snake-like Jack Wilson (Jack Palance). But the Starretts have acquired their own champion, a mysterious white knight gunslinger known only as Shane (Alan Ladd). Shane hires on as a handyman seemingly out of sympathy for the Starretts. Marian feels an unacknowledged attraction to him. Shane initially refuses to be provoked into violence, but a house burning and some killings make a pacifist stance impossible. The Rykers use Jack Wilson to bait Joe into a ‘fair fight’ trap. Will Shane step in to help, or would that be interfering with something that’s none of his business?

By all accounts Shane dazzled audiences from the get-go. Alan Ladd’s noble cavalier enters slowly from the horizon, framed in the antlers of a buck deer. The Starrett family has everything going for it, as the father is strong and the wife happy. She bakes apple pie, so they’re even getting fresh apples from somewhere. The deer seem to know that little Joey isn’t allowed ammunition for his rifle. This is an American Garden of Eden under the snowy Rockies. It’s free from smog, traffic congestion and tax collectors, but not from other Americans.

George Stevens’ direction is several notches above what viewers expected in a western. The characters are conceived as stereotypes, but they definitely have emotional depth. Little Joey is governed by curiosity and openness, and he takes an immediate liking to the mysterious stranger. Joe Starrett is moved by Shane’s honesty; they form a bond of comradeship while removing a stubborn tree trunk together. They are also tested in fistfights against Ryker’s men. Marian loves her husband but is charmed by the buckskin-clad drifter’s gentle good manners. It doesn’t hurt that Shane is also a blonde Adonis … she begins to develop a serious crush on him.

Guthrie and Stevens idealize the settlers yet avoid outright endorsement of them as some kind of Chosen People. All the newcomers to the territory are upstanding, hardy pioneer types. The utterly uncomplicated Swedish family would seem a holdover from Stevens’  I Remember Mama. There’s no casting against type. Poor Elisha Cook Jr. is once again set up as the ultimate Fall Guy, even in pioneer garb: his hotheaded ex-confederate can be lured into a Ryker trap with just a couple of insults against The South.

The Rykers are given better motivations than the usual cardboard western baddies. Under the illusion that they can maintain an open range, they take advantage of the absence of police. Rufus Ryker claims to be a reasonable man — just so long as his will prevails. In reality, more sophisticated Wyoming cattlemen banded together in associations to lobby Washington. Real range wars were a mess of overlapping legal rights. Thirty years later, Michael Cimino’s  Heaven’s Gate expanded and exaggerated the conflict between ranchers and immigrants into an apocalyptic holocaust.

Shane is known for its realism, a quality that doesn’t extend much further than its authentic scenery, muddy streets and credible costumes. In most respects this is a by-the-numbers formula oater that uses superior filmmaking skill to enliven what are consistently stereotypical relationships and situations. The idealized Shane might as well be an angel from the great beyond. He arrives off the prairie fresh and clean, as if he just came from the dry cleaners. Shane is kind to small boys, square with the father and a dream partner for the frontier wife. And he’s housebroken!  When not showing Joey how to shoot like a man, he sets an example for table etiquette. John Ford told us to print the legend instead of the facts; George Stevens tells us to print the myth instead of the legend.

A quarter-century previous, George Stevens had filmed some silent westerns, when not serving as the cameraman for Laurel & Hardy comedies. By the 1950s he confined his movie work to ‘important’ subjects; perhaps he wanted to make a definitive statement about American values by summing up the best aspects of the western genre. The central conflict — ranch thugs vs. farm families — is less complicated than the musical  Oklahoma!, where at least the ranchers have womenfolk too. The Rykers hang around the bar and harass the settlers.

Even though he’s hired a contract killer, the villainous Rufus Ryker lectures Starret about All-American Fairness.  ↓  These may be the movie’s best-acted scenes — Emile Meyer’s performance is exactly what’s needed. Rufus has a touch of the self-satisfied corruption Meyer brought to his Lt. Kello in the superlative  Sweet Smell of Success: “Come back Sydney, I want to chastize you!”

Director Stevens’ ‘super-western’ is a mix of realism and baloney. Most of the baloney is associated with violence: fistfights in which men receive multiple blows to the head with no ill effects. As in a juvenile action serial, men are knocked unconscious, but suffer no concussions or brain damage. Joe clobbers Rufus over the head with an ax handle, which ought to smash his skull like a pumpkin. Ten seconds later, Rufus is back in the fight. It’s no wonder we ’50s kids bashed each other to bits playing guns and swords.  “You’ll put your eye out!” was 100% right.

The gun violence has power partly because George Stevens restricts it to only a couple of scenes. In his commentary, George Stevens Jr. emphasizes that his father wanted to give audiences a real taste of the awful power of guns. But audiences already loved the way westerns glorify gun violence. Bolstered by terrific showdown suspense and punctuated by sound effects that make one think a cannon has been fired, the gunfights here are breathtaking. Warren Beatty was so impressed by Shane’s extra-loud gunshots that he investigated the Paramount sound department’s techniques when making his  Bonnie & Clyde.

There’s nothing progressive about the male-run Starret household; it’s a loving frontier family but not the Hallmark Card fairy-tale of TV’s  Little House on the Prairie. Mrs. Starrett doesn’t have much of a voice at the table, and family harmony seems to include a feminine endorsement of violence. When Marian chides Shane about his six-gun, she receives a calm speech that would warm the heart of an NRA devotee — men are bad, not guns. Alan Ladd says these words as if they were part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Little Joe observes all the violence, and the lesson he takes away is that Shane’s gun dispenses the justice of God. When Marian witnesses a brawl that ought to leave Joe and Shane on life support in an ICU ward, she smiles in contentment — her Joe is a Real Man.

Stevens’ depiction of Marian and Shane’s mutual attraction is exceptionally good. The good husband Joe doesn’t take Marian for granted, but she knows she can’t express the full range of her feelings to him. Her defense against straying is to meekly ask her husband to hold her, which in 1953 movie terms is Stevens’ version of a hot sex scene. This is a solid family, even if the dynamic is 1870, not 2025.

Stevens’ overall message is not pacifist; he witnessed the Nazi death camps and held the conviction that Evil must be opposed. The film’s violence promotes the fantasy of ‘good folk’ victories. Joe and Shane defeat three times their number in the bar fight, and emerge smiling. When Joe is up against forces he can’t possibly defeat, he wins anyway, because his values have inspired Shane to intervene with his super-cool gunfighting skill. Yes, this is a dream of how America should work.

It may not look so on first glance, but Shane is phenomenally well edited; it displays a masterful control of audience reaction through shot selection and editing. Despite the expense of the 3-strip Technicolor process Stevens covered many scenes from multiple angles. He unerringly cuts to the perfect angle on the perfect frame, never drawing attention to technique or the presence of the camera. Obvious cutting patterns, as when the tree stump is chopped down, seem natural. The montage cuts in the fast scenes frequently use bits of action just a few frames in length, yet we see everything we’re meant to see.

Stevens also knows when to refrain from cutting, as when staging a certain shooting in the muddy town street. By using only a couple of angles, Stevens amplifies tenfold the stark brutality. The jarring action within the frame makes the statement, along with a deafening KABOOM sound effect.

The movie has one awkward passage, involving Chris, the character played by favorite cowboy star Ben Johnson. Introduced as a prime villain, Chris disappears from the continuity after just a few scenes. He then appears in a somewhat superfluous scene, telling Shane that he’s quitting the bad-guy racket. It may be that Stevens added this moment as a favor to Johnson’s mentor John Ford, who may have thought the movie would hurt his contractee’s image as a heroic leading man. Johnson’s bad guy is very convincing … until the ‘new guy in town’ Jack Palance shows up to introduce an entirely new level of viciousness.

Stevens’ favorite Jean Arthur had called it quits after supposedly being treated badly on Billy Wilder’s  A Foreign Affair (a superior comedy-drama). This show was a comeback film for her, but also her last feature film appearance. Stevens handles Ms. Arthur with kid gloves, and cameraman Loyal Griggs supplies light diffusion on her close-ups.

Jack Palance’s Jack Wilson is loathsome yet riveting, and a breed apart from the ‘loser’ bad guys of westerns like  High Noon, who we know will end up in Boot Hill. Shane helped elevate the rugged actor to star status and romantic leading roles.

The movie also marks the discovery of Brandon De Wilde, whose later notable films were  Blue Denim,  Hud and  In Harm’s Way. The child actor gets the film’s unforgettable farewell scene, staring at the disappearing Alan Ladd. Frankly, his little face is so vacantly uncomprehending, Stevens could have gotten almost the same effect with Joey’s dog. Little Joey also appears to be begging for the return of old-fashioned heroic westerns, with their uncomplicated moral values.

There’s no denying that Shane is a first-rank production. It didn’t meet with much favor back in the politicized atmosphere of the UCLA Film School circa 1972. Feminist author-critic Janey Place saw it as a retrograde stack of clichés supporting the status quo, an affirmation of genre lies about the frontier experience. Be that as it may, George Stevens wasn’t after a revisionist statement. The same complaints apply much more strongly to his adventure  Gunga Din, which distorts and demonizes a foreign culture and uses the colonial oppression of India as an opportunity for violent slapstick comedy.   It’s enormously entertaining too!

Having left his comedy roots behind, George Stevens would devote his later films to sober humanist issues. I can’t say that I ever warmed up to Shane’s characters or respected what it had to say. But who says it had to ‘say’ anything?  There’s no denying that this is one of the handsomest, most artistically polished westerns ever. It displays a surfeit of fine filmmaking craft, and not just the director’s signature slow dissolves. Stevens’ editorial decisions distiguish this western from 1,000 others. In tense situations, the cutting stretches out the gaps between dialogue lines, adding a bit of ‘stasis’ to let the characters’ attitudes sink in. The technique underscores what everyone says and does, telling us, this exchange is important. We pay closer attention, knowing ‘something is gonna happen.’

Is Shane a case of western mythomania, a charge that critic Raymond Durgnat leveled at Peckinpah’s  The Wild Bunch?  Shane offers a bit of dialogue that could have come from Peckinpah, about ‘the day of the gunslinger’ being over. That message had been around forever, yet it may not have come to the fore in a serious way until Henry King’s  The Gunfighter a couple of years before. At any rate, George Stevens’s western is separate from the revisionist trend then gaining steam — the Shane character is too much like the demi-God westerners of silent movies, ‘pure-hearted’ fantasy frontiersmen that embody a dream version of American virtues.

The KL Studio Classics new disc gives the 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray boost to Shane, a real audience-pleaser of a movie. Before 2013 it had been seen for decades only in substandard copies. The film prints made for its 1959 theatrical reissue were weak — in 1973, Paramount’s only vault copy was a greenish Eastman photochemical composite. Kino’s text says ‘from the original Camera Negative,’ which we hope was really the three original Technicolor camera negatives. The 4K image brings out a lot of subtlety in the image, that’s for sure; we can appreciate the artfulness of the lighting even in dark saloon interiors. Instead of a general blur in the many landscape shots, we can admire the atmospherics of low clouds, haze, and rain falling in the distance. When the main title fades up in red, the show almost looks as if it were filmed in 3-D.

Mountain overcast never looked this good — so good that we remember how sharply the temperature can drop when a cloud passes over. It looks like the weather in the Grand Tetons cooperated with the production, as the mountains are often veiled by dramatic clouds and mist. Just the same, we can imagine the film’s first and second units waiting for hours for just the right light, the right sky. The production also took the time needed to get amazingly natural scenes with the deer that little Joey wishes he could shoot.

The image on the front of the package surprised me — it is original poster artwork, although none of the main characters pictured capture the stars’ likenesses, not at all. Jean Arthur looks more like Lilli Palmer, or Maria Schell.

Shane was shot flat but projected in widescreen for its first New York engagements in 1953. It’s a safe bet that Paramount told theaters that they could show it full-frame as well, as the changeover to widescreen had just begun. We can see that the studio formatted the title text blocks to frame properly at 1:75. Depending on how one defines ‘original theatrical version’ a case can be made that a widescreen presentation would be legit. Included as an extra (on the Blu-ray only) is a widescreen-formatted reissue trailer that gives an idea of how the film looked when matted. A few shots are a little tight, but the widescreen scan looks good too. Putting this show out in both ARs would make a lot more sense than, say, when Criterion gave us copies of  On the Waterfront in both 1:66 and 1:85 .

Back from the 2013 release is a commentary that combines the thoughts of associate producer Ivan Moffat and George Stevens Jr., the keeper of the flame for his father’s legacy. We hear anecdotes about the location filming and the personnel; both men are still impressed by director Stevens’ accomplishment. Also present is a new commentary by Alan K. Rode that delivers more production data, facts about careers and trends, and direct information about the films’ release. The premiere at Grauman’s Chinese was indeed widescreen. We’re surprised to learn that George Stevens was a producer-director for hire on this show. Rode said that Stevens supported the widescreen re-framing as necessary, even though he made the usual comments about the CinemaScope screen shape being suitable only for things like snakes.

Nobody mentions the physical symbolism at the finale that suggests that the phantom ‘angel’ gunslinger Shane may not be long for this world. The trouble is foreshadowed when Joey takes a short cut through the cemetery on his dash to town. When Shane finally exits he’s last seen framed through that cemetery; his dark form almost looks like a moving tombstone. As the myth goes, the valiant man of violence clears the way for a civilization that no longer has a place for him. We’re forced to conclude that George Stevens saw the filmic West as a place for optimistic American fairy tales. His next, very liberal movie  Giant would undercut several of the values celebrated here.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Shane
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
2025 commentary with Alan K. Rode
2013 commentary with George Stevens Jr. and Ivan Moffat
Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: July 17, 2025
(7357shan)

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