Actors - Shane

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	Actors - Shane

Shane (1953) was the first bigscreen (Vista-vision) color western film ever produced. (That format offered bigger, brighter images, but only slightly wider than standard films) It tells the story of a gunfighter who comes to a recently settled farm area near a quiet town and fights for the farmers against the hard-bitten cattle men who control the majority of the land. It was based on a 1949 novel by Jack Schaefer; some of the story tied to Wyoming's Johnson County War. The physical setting is the high plains near Jackson Hole WY, with the spectacular Grand Teton Massiff looming in the near distance. The beauty of this film's setting was unprecedented in earlier western films. The music was stereophonic, and lent an additional grandeur to the Vista-vision presentation.

Plot summary

A mysterious gunslinger named Shane drifts into a quiet town whose backdrop is Wyoming's Grand Tetons, and quickly finds himself drawn into a conflict between a simple homesteader Joe Starrett and a powerful cattle baron Rufus Ryker, who wants to force him off his land. Shane accepts a job as a farmhand, but finds Starrett's young son Joey drawn to him for his strength and skill with a gun. Shane himself is uncomfortably drawn to Starrett's wholesomely charming wife, Marian. As tensions mount between the factions, Ryker hires Jack Wilson, a cold & evil-eyed gunslinger with considerable skill. In the end, Shane must make several tough moral decisions that will affect everyone involved. Finally, circumstances force him to take on Wilson in a climactic showdown, killing him and Ryker, but being at least wounded in the process. After urging young Joey to refrain from a life of guns and violence, Shane leaves for parts unknown. Due to the ambiguous nature of the final shot, there is some question as to whether or not Shane will actually survive the recent wounds.

Awards

It won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Color. It was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Brandon De Wilde), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jack Palance), Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay.

The original film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

'Shane' in popular culture

Shane the television series appeared in 1966 and featured David Carradine
in the title role.

Clint Eastwood
directed a semi-remake of Shane, called Pale Rider
starring himself and Chris Penn
.

In Sergio Leone's "Spaghetti
" epic Once Upon a Time in the West
, he made tribute sequence to Shane where we see a young boy pretending to shoot birds while hunting with his dad. That scene is similar to Joey when he is playing field and pretending to shoot ducks before he met Shane.

The comedian Bill Hicks compared the US foreign policy in Iraq to the actions of Jack Palance
's character in the film, referring specifically to the scene in which he throws a pacifist sheep herder a gun, forces him to pick it up, then shoots him, justifying the killing with the words 'You all saw him. He had a gun'.

At the start of the 1984 Roger Waters concept album, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, Roger Waters' character is watching the film 'Shane' on his television. Later on, the title track contains the lyrics: 'Do you remember Dick Tracy?/Do you remember Shane?'

In Ultimate X-Men, Storm compares the periodically nomadic Wolverine to Shane, saying he goes "from town to town, righting wrongs".

In the Samuel L. Jackson
and Kevin Spacey
movie, "The Negotiator
", the ambiguity of the ending is used as a plot point. Spacey's character, Chris Sabian, asks Samuel L. Jackson's character, Danny Roman, why (in a conversation the two were having about Sabiens' interests) Danny chose a movie in which the hero dies at the end. The two proceed to have an argument about what happens to Shane: Sabian arguing that Shane dies, citing Shane slumping, while Roman argues that that is only an assumption.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Shane (film) ]

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Actors - Shane

Plot summary

Awards

'Shane' in popular culture

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