Review: Shane (1953)

* * * *
Director: George Stevens
Starring: Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Brandon DeWilde

Shane is undoubtedly one of the best and most beloved westerns ever made. The story is relatively simply - good guys, bad guys, and a morally ambiguous hero - but what director George Stevens and his cast do with it makes the film truly special. Not all classic films hold up over time, but Shane does.

Alan Ladd stars as Shane, a mysterious drifter whose path crosses with that of the Starretts' - Joe (Van Heflin), Marian (Jean Arthur), and young Joey (Brandon DeWilde) - at exactly the right time. The Starretts' livelihood is under constant threat from Rufus Ryker (Emile Meyer), a cattle baron who wants to push them, and all the other homesteaders in the valley, off their land so that he can take it over for his own use. Shane decides to stay on with the Staretts as their hired man, though really he's just waiting for the inevitable showdown with Ryker and his crew, who don't think twice about using violence and intimidation to get what they want.

When Joe convinces the other homesteaders to band together to find a way to fight back, Ryker sends for Jack Wilson (Jack Palance), a gun for hire, to add some extra muscle to his force. Shane is familiar with Wilson's reputation and when Ryker sends an invitation to Joe for a peace meeting that's actually an ambush, Shane knocks his friend out in order to take his place and settle things once and for all. When all is said and done, Shane will either be dead or forced to ride alone into the sunset because, as he warns Joey, "There's no living with a killing. There's no going back from one. Right or wrong, it's a brand."

On the surface Shane is a fairly conventional film, assembled with the stock parts of the classic hollywood western. You've got the mysterious gunslinger, the woman he ultimately cannot have, the all powerful villain, the gunfight, the bad guy in the black hat, the good guy in the white. Shane takes these elements and goes deeper, becoming a study of character and society. The most striking thing about it is its exploration of ideas about masculinity, how it defines "real men" and pretenders. Shane, certainly, is a real man, as is Joe and even Wilson. They are men willing to get their hands dirty and fight their battles. On the flip side there's Ryker, a villain who talks a good game but is ultimately impotent when it comes to enforcing his threats. Late in the film he remarks that he'll kill Joe if he has to, to which Wilson sharply replies, "You mean I'll kill him if you have to." Wilson is undoubtedly a villain in this piece, but he's still seen as more honourable than Ryker, who delegates the tough part. In the final showdown Shane is Joe's agent, just as Wilson is Ryker's, but Joe hasn't willingly stepped aside to let Shane enter the standoff and so he's allowed to retain his honour.

The story is seen through Joey's eyes, which is important thematically because he's at an age where he's beginning the define for himself what it means to be a man. The film gives him plenty of examples of types of manhood - Joe's, in which violence is the last resort and reason the first weapon; Shane's, in which violence yields the best results when used with a cool head; that of the neighbor Torrey (Elisha Cook Jr.), who is quick to fight but doesn't use his head - and the ending is somewhat ambiguous as to which path he'll follow. By the end of the film he sees that his father is a good, honourable man, but he also sees the glamour that surrounds Shane, even if his actions do force him into exile.

The performances in the film are uniformly good, playing to the tropes of the western genre without feeling stale. The biggest surprise for me is DeWilde, if only because so often in films kids end up being precocious to a fault, but Stevens guides him to a strong performance that balances innocence with a budding knowledge of the ways of the world. So much of the film's success depends on this character and performance and it's pitch perfect. The film itself is pretty close to perfection, too, and it's staying power definitely can't be denied.

Review: Hud (1963)

* * * 1/2
Director: Martin Ritt
Starring: Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, Melvyn Douglas, Brandon De Wilde

Hud Bannon is “the man with the barbed wire soul,” a man without principle, a man who never met a person he would think twice about being mean to. He also – inexplicably as far as his portrayer, Paul Newman, was concerned – became a figure of worship in popular culture, a man that younger men wanted to become (in Midnight Cowboy Joe Buck has the famed poster of Hud on his wall). This isn’t the absolute best movie Newman ever made (for me that would be Cool Hand Luke), but of all his performances, this one is my favourite.

Hud is a ne’er do well whose sole interests are women, drinking and fighting, and not always in that order. He lives on a cattle ranch with his father (Melvyn Douglas), his nephew Lon (Brandon De Wilde), and their housekeeper, Alma (Patricia Neal), with whom he enjoys a charged rapport. Hud and his father have a fractured relationship which seems to inform the way that he relates to all other people: fearing rejection, he keeps everyone at a distance, though he longs desperately for companionship.

Problems between Hud and his father reach a crescendo as Hud begins spending more time with Lon, passing on his bad habits, and after a cow dies under mysterious circumstances. The fear is that the cow has succumbed to foot and mouth disease and that the rest of the heard will have to be slaughtered to avoid an epidemic. Hud wants to sell off the cattle before the government can declare them unfit, but his father refuses and they eventually have a confrontation in which he reveals that his dislike of Hud doesn’t stem from the accident which killed Lon’s father, but rather from his lack of character. It’s this lack of character, the refusal to care about anything other than himself, that ensures that Hud will end up exactly where he does: all alone.

The performances make the movie, with all four of the principles delivering solid, nuanced portrayals. Newman ambles seductively through the film, alternating between easy going banter and angry sulking. Rejected by his father, he lashes out at him but remains desperate from some kind of approval from him. When his father makes his brutal proclamation, all Hud can do is throw up his hands and say with a mixture of anger and sadness, “My mama loved me but she died.” Newman hits a complex series of notes throughout the film, making for a character who is difficult to like most of the time, but also compelling in the way that someone who is his own worst enemy can be compelling.

As for the other three, De Wilde is solid playing a young man who finds himself caught between wanting to do the right things like his grandfather, but also seduced in a way by his uncle, who just seems so cool; Neal is wonderful as the no nonsense housekeeper who is drawn to Hud despite knowing better and the scenes between her and Newman crackle with electricity (“Don’t go shootin’ all the dogs 'cause one of 'em’s got fleas,” Hud drawls while lying across her bed); and Douglas is simply marvellous. He’s an actor I find myself consistently surprised by: the actor who plays the worn down old man here is the same as the one who played Garbo’s elegant romantic foil in Ninotchka and the difference can’t be attributed solely to age. Douglas won an Oscar for his work here, as did Neal, and Newman was nominated as Best Actor, but lost to Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field. If you’ve never seen this movie, I can’t recommend it more. Rarely do you get the chance to watch four great actors, all at the top of their form, playing off of each other like this.