TOP 21 FAVORITE WESTERNS -- MONTE WALSH

#2

MONTE WALSH (NGP, 1970)

 
DIRECTOR: William A. Fraker;  PRODUCERS: Hal Landers and Bobby Roberts; WRITERS: David Z. Goodman and Lucas Heller from story by Jack Schafer;  CINEMATOGRAPHY: David M. Walsh

CAST: Lee Marvin, Jeanne Moreau, Jack Palance, Mitchell Ryan, Jim Davis, G.D. Spradlin, John Hudkins, Raymond Guth, John McKee, Michael Conrad, Tom Heaton, Ted Gehring, Bo Hopkins, John McLiam, Allyn Ann McLerie, Matt Clark, Billy Green Bush, Eric Christmas, Charles Tyner, Richard Farnsworth, Guy Wilkerson, Roy Barcroft

“The good times are coming

They’ll be coming real soon

And I’m not just pitching pennies at the moon”

(NOTE: Earlier I wrote about my introduction to MONTE WALSH and if you wish, you may read about it here)

THE PLOT.

This underrated and unappreciated classic film is the best depiction of the hardship, humdrum drudgery, good humor, and camaraderie of cowboy life ever filmed.

Railroad expansion has made the long cattle drive obsolete; the open range has been fenced in; and a bitterly harsh winter has forced the local ranchers to sell out to a corporation, the Consolidated Land Company.  The land company, like corporations everywhere, does not possess a conscience.  Accountants are in charge, money has become capital, and the primary concern is the bottom line. 

All these factors have a basis in historical reality, including the harsh winter.  Blizzards in the 1880s bankrupted many ranchers and exerted a long-range transformative effect on Western cattle ranching.

Sadly, these events conspire to make the cowboy – or most of them, anyway -- obsolete. 

Nevertheless, two aging cowboys (Marvin and Palance) try to continue as though nothing has changed, but the economic forces of the era are working against them.  In the short run, they are more fortunate than some of the other cowhands.  

Cal Brennan (Davis), the former owner of the Slash Y, is now an employee of the land company.  As ranch manager, he is forced by the company’s absentee property owners to downsize the workforce.  He does so by laying-off the younger men, which allows Monte (Marvin) and Chet (Palance) a reprieve – at least for the time being.

“I’m not about to come unhinged when everything goes wrong
A fact is something to be faced
But not for very long”

Monte is an optimist, one could say an idealist.  No matter what bad things come his way, and many bad things do, he nevertheless retains his optimism.  Many idealists become cynics when events transpire against them and their ideals do not carry the day, but not Monte.  

He loses everything that he cherishes, his friends, especially Chet, the woman he loves, and is on the verge of losing his way of life, but he never gives up the battle to retain his self-respect, his optimism, or his sense of humor, even though he is reduced to telling stories to his horse in the film’s final scene.

Chet, on the other hand, is more pragmatic than his partner.  He has seen the handwriting on the wall and finally realizes that it is time to accept reality and to adjust accordingly.  

The most poignant moment in what is a very poignant film occurs when Chet finally concedes and decides to quit cowboy life and marry a town widow (McLerie) who owns a hardware store:

MONTE WALSH (Lee Marvin): “Cowboys don’t get married, unless they stop being cowboys.”

CHET ROLLINS (Jack Palance): “Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever.”

How true, but how sad.

“I ain’t doin’ nothin’ I can’t do from my horse.” – MONTE WALSH (Lee Marvin)

Shorty Austin (Ryan), a buddy to Monte and Chet, is one of the younger cowboys who loses his job.  He teams up with a couple of other men (Bush and Clark) who are in the same fix.  The trio of ex-cowhands respond to the changing times by taking to the outlaw trail with tragic consequences for Chet and Monte.

There isn’t a lot of action or violence or gunplay in MONTE WALSH.   It is a character-driven story that spends the first half of the movie establishing the characters and the changing circumstances they must confront.  The lack of action is the primary reason that some critics have been negative in their reviews.  But there is a great deal to like, including outstanding performances by the cast, good direction and writing, and stunning location photography.

Colin over at Riding the High Country perfectly summarizes the movie’s appeal when he writes, “[t]his is a remarkable film, a work of gentle and understated power, one which can break your heart and yet fill it up with renewed optimism at the same time.”   

THE STARS.

Ironically, Marvin, in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (Ford/Paramount, 1962), and Palance, in SHANE (Paramount, 1953), gave us two of the meanest, most unredeemable, and most memorable bad guys ever to appear on the screen.  But here they are excellent in  good-guy roles.

Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times:

“The performances are extraordinary.  Marvin has very seldom been better; he leaves in the toughness of his usual screen character, but he also reveals a lot of depth….[Y]ou’re reminded once again what a good actor Palance is, and how seldom he gets the opportunity to prove it.”

However, here is another view.

Vincent Canby wrote in his review of the film in the New York Times that MONTE WALSH “is not a very good movie, but one that is often appealing in its individual parts.”   

He is also critical of Marvin’s performance:

“I suppose that Marvin seemed like an excellent choice for the title role.  He is tough, grizzled, a little crazy, but he is also turning professionally cute, given to comic mannerisms that are beginning to remind me more and more of Andy Clyde—but this may be because the film includes a rather exuberant outhouse routine.”

Andy Clyde?  Come now, Mr. Canby.  Furthermore, just how is it that Andy Clyde and “a rather exuberant outhouse routine” are related?  

Canby has better things to say about Palance, Moreau, and Ryan, but also complains that the story’s principal villains, the property owners, are 2,500 miles away, off screen, and communicate via letter and telegraph. 

Well, that’s the way it really was.

“The good times are coming

When they come I’ll be there

With both my feet planted in mid-air”

One of the great strengths of the film is how well Marvin and Palance relate to each other.  That could be because they knew each other quite well, having appeared together in two films before this one.  In 1956, Palance, in an electrifying performance, starred in the intense WWII drama, ATTACK! (UA, directed by Robert Aldrich), with Lee Marvin very good in a supporting role.  

A decade later, after his Oscar winning performance in CAT BALLOU (Columbia, 1965) had elevated him to leading man status , Marvin starred with Burt Lancaster in THE PROFESSIONALS (Columbia, 1966, directed by Richard Brooks), with Palance in a supporting role.

In the realm of what might have been, I have read that Marvin turned down a role in THE WILD BUNCH (WB, 1969) in order to star in PAINT YOUR WAGON (Paramount, 1969), the film he appeared in just prior to MONTE WALSH. I suppose it seemed to be a good idea at the time.    

Jeanne Moreau gives a touching performance as Martine Benard, a prostitute who loves Monte, but understands that marriage is probably not in their future.  

In their scenes together, it is obvious that there is some real chemistry between Moreau and Marvin.  She was later quoted as saying, “Lee Marvin is more male than anyone I have ever acted with.  He is the greatest man’s man I have ever met and that includes all the European stars I have worked with.” 

In the course of her career, Jeanne Moreau acted in more than a hundred movies and dozens of plays and she was a huge star – especially in Europe.   

In 2001, Jeff Galipeaux wrote on the Salon website that Moreau “is the heavyweight of 60s cinema, and so far, the last of the heavyweights.  In the decades since Moreau’s heyday, many fine welterweights have come up through the ranks…but no one who could have handled her run of 60s films with the intelligence, wisdom, range and unself-consciousness she conveys with preternatural ease.”

THE SUPPORTING CAST.

The stars have much able support beginning with Mitchell Ryan, in only his third feature film, and Jim Davis appearing in his 86th.

three memorable cowboys: (L-R) -- Monte Walsh, Cal Brennan, Chet Rollins

Davis, much like John Ireland, was always an effective performer in Westerns.  It is hard to figure, but neither got the big break that he deserved.  They often gave good performances in supporting roles in bigger-budget productions and were nearly always better than the low-budget movies in which they starred.

It was well nigh impossible to make a Western in the 70s without casting Matt Clark in a supporting role.  MONTE WALSH is no exception and Clark is very good as Rufus Brady, one of the cowboys who respond to hard times by becoming an outlaw.  His partner in crime, in addition to Shorty Austin (Ryan), is another very good supporting actor, Billy Green Bush.  I really like his name in this movie: Powder Kent.  I even like the name Billy Green Bush.

"There's gonna be a place for us
A place where we belong
To stand outside just looking in
Has got to be all wrong"

THE DIRECTOR.

MONTE WALSH was William Fraker’s first film as director.  It was an impressive debut and showed great promise for the future.  However, he directed only two other films. 

He was more interested in cinematography, the job that had made him famous.  During his illustrious career, he received five Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography.  

His expertise in that area is ever apparent in the outstanding utilization of Arizona locations in MONTE WALSH.  He and cinematographer David Walsh teamed to give us a beautiful film.

William Fraker, Director

What were the two other films that he directed?   Well, that probably should be left unsaid since they certainly didn’t come up to the standards of his debut, that’s for sure.  

Roger Greenspun wrote in his review of Fraker’s second directorial effort, A REFLECTION OF FEAR (Columbia, 1973), that “there is such a density of atmospheric haze that half the film looks as if it had been photographed through  a jellyfish.” (Ouch!).  It must have quickly faded into oblivion because I don’t know of anyone who has ever seen it.

His third film could not be criticized for its photography,  but unfortunately,  he was done in by his star, the one-and-only Klinton Spilsbury.  Beautifully photographed in New Mexico and Monument Valley, THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER (Universal, 1981) could not overcome a star whose acting was so atrocious that his dialogue had to be dubbed by James Keach.

No wonder Fraker returned full-time to cinematography after that one.  He was fortunate to have a fallback position.  Klinton Spilsbury didn’t.  It was his first and last appearance on the screen – big or small.

THE WRITERS.

The film’s original source material is an episodic novel by the same title written by Jack Schaefer, and published in 1963. Schaefer, of course, is known primarily as the author of Shane, a much more famous book.  However, he was quoted as saying that he thought Monte Walsh was a better novel.  I have to agree with him. It is one of my favorite novels – Western or otherwise.

The screenplay was placed in the capable hands of David Goodman and Lucas Heller.  They took great liberties in adapting Schaefer’s novel to the extent that it is possible to enjoy both without one ruining the other. Despite the differences that exist between the novel and the screenplay, I highly recommend both.

THE MUSIC.

The film has been criticized by some (Brian Garfield for one, but not me) for its theme song, “The Good Times are Coming,” which is sung by Cass Elliott over the opening credits, and at other times during the film.  

Personally, I love the song (music by John Barry and lyrics by Hal David) and I think that it fits the mood of the movie like a comfortable old shoe.  In fact, it takes days to get it out of my head after hearing it.

Also adding a nice touch are the Charlie Russell sketches that serve as a backdrop for the opening credits.  Cass Elliott and Charlie Russell – now that’s a winning combination.

 

"The good times are coming"

******

REVIEWS:

“Generally underrated,  MONTE WALSH is a fine film in its elegiac depiction of real cowboy life; it’s better and more honest, for example, than the similar WILL PENNY [Paramount, 1968].” – Brian Garfield in Western Films: A Complete Guide

“…Marvin and Palance (a wonderful grin playing across his face for most of the film) give an example of the inarticulate but good-humored friendship that alleviates the drudgery of a cowboy’s life.” – Phil Hardy in The Western

And now for an opposing viewpoint:

“…MONTE WALSH is handled with such meditative pacing and melodramatic deliberation that it continually threatens to put the viewer to sleep.  Interest is maintained by Lee Marvin and Jack Palance…who manage to come across as aging ranch hands….First-time director Fraker managed to conjure up a grimy, naturalistic view of the dog-eared West that is effective.” – Steven H. Scheuer

Because of superior cinematography, MONTE WALSH is a more enjoyable film if it is viewed on a large movie screen, which I had the privilege of doing.  However, it is still a treat on a small screen.  

You can watch it on YouTube.

 

TOP 21 FAVORITE WESTERNS -- SHANE

# 3

SHANE (Paramount, 1953)

DIRECTOR: George Stevens;  PRODUCER: George Stevens; ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Ivan Moffat;  WRITERS: A.B. Guthrie, Jr. (screenplay) and Jack Sher (additional dialogue) from a story by Jack Schaefer;  CINEMATOGRAPHER: Loyal Griggs

CAST: 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, Leonard Strong, Ray Spiker

THE PLOT.

George Stevens took an uncomplicated, slow-moving tale containing Western archetypes such as the gunfighter, the rancher, and the farmer, mixed in a typical conflict between cattlemen and sodbusters, and turned it all into a penetrating personal vision.  It was a refreshing and classic return to the themes of man vs. man and man vs. nature in the building of the West.

SHANE (Alan Ladd): “Do you mind putting down that gun?  Then I’ll leave.”

JOE STARRETT (Van Heflin):  “What difference does it make?  You’re leaving anyway.

SHANE:  "I’d like it to be my idea."

A buckskinned horseman from nowhere, named Shane (Ladd), with a mysterious and undoubtedly violent past, arrives in a Wyoming valley in search of refuge – or a hiding place – or perhaps simply peace.

He hires on as a hand with a farm family (Heflin, Arthur, De Wilde) that is being threatened by a powerful anti-homesteader rancher (Meyer), his tough brother (Dierkes), their arrogant cowhands (Johnson being the most prominent), and the hired gunslinger (Palance) they’ve employed to drive the homesteaders off the land.

Gunfighter wearing fancy gun belt and riding fancy horse meets hard-working homesteader

The movie and its plot are so well known that I don’t think I am giving anything away when I say that in the end, after exhausting every peaceable means, Shane finally confronts the powerful land-grabbing villains, gives them and their hired hands their just desserts, and rides away to disappear – wounded, possibly dying, but making the sacrifice because his dignity requires it: riding off, in the tradition of cowboy heroes, into the sunset, alone, with young Joey Starrett (De Wilde) calling after him, “Shane…Shane …come back Shane!”

He didn’t come back.  He couldn’t.

“There’s no living with a killing.  There’s no going back from one.  Right or wrong, it’s a brand…a brand sticks.  There’s no going back.  Now you run home to your mother and tell her…tell her everything’s all right.  And there aren’t any more guns in the valley.”  -- SHANE 

Yes, it is a plot that has been filmed many times, before and after SHANE, but never as well. The story is much more subtle than what a bare outline of its plot can portray.

True, we have the age-old struggle between good and evil.  Both Shane and Wilson (Palance) are gunslingers, but there the similarity ends.  

Shane has a conscience and is remorseful when he is forced to use his gun.  Not so, Wilson.  He enjoys what he does and suffers no remorse or misgivings about his line of work.  

Shane may not enjoy it, but he is a killer.  Can such a person be totally virtuous?  Wilson, on the other hand, is evil incarnate.  Ambiguity is not one of the characteristics of his personality as it is with Shane.

It seems that Shane is searching for something – perhaps for himself – and the result is an inner war that he is destined to lose.  In the end, he realizes he is trapped, that it is impossible to break the mold.

There is also the struggle between the civilized life, as represented by the homesteaders, and the primitive life, as represented by the ranchers.  However, here the distinction is not as clear-cut as it often is in Western films. 

The rancher Ryker (Meyer) is not entirely an unreasonable man.  He even says at one point that he likes Joe Starrett (Heflin), the leader of the homesteaders.  He even offers to hire Starrett and Shane.  

He is also correct when he says that it was he and his kind who defeated the Indians and tamed the land and now the farmers were moving in and attempting to take over that land, a free range that was suitable only for cattle ranching and not farming.  History would prove him correct on that last score.

So, why don’t we feel more sympathy for Ryker?  That’s an easy question to answer.  It’s because he hires the coldblooded killer Jack Wilson to do his dirty work for him.

 

poor Elisha Cook never stood a chance

RUFUS RYKER (Emile Meyer):  “I’ll kill him if I have to.”

JACK WILSON (Jack Palance):  “You mean I’ll kill him if you have to.”

THE STARS.

Director George Stevens’ first choice for the lead role was Montgomery Clift, whom he had directed in A PLACE IN THE SUN (Paramount, 1951).  Depending on the source, Clift either turned down the role or had a conflict.  William Holden was the director’s choice to play Joe Starrett.  However, he wasn’t available either.  The result was the casting of Alan Ladd and Van Heflin.

Holden would have been a great choice to play Starrett, but it is hard to comprehend how he would have been better in the role than Heflin.  With Holden in the role it would have been more difficult to accept the premise that Starrett’s wife Marian (Arthur) was attracted to Shane.  With Heflin, a great actor, but no lady’s man, in the role, the attraction becomes more logical.

Montgomery Clift was a tremendous actor and one of my favorites.  He gave some riveting performances in some of the best movies ever filmed.  But (you knew that there was going to be a but, didn’t you?) – But I don’t think he would have been convincing as Shane.  It is probably sacrilegious to say this, but I didn’t find him convincing in his only Western role, that being RED RIVER (UA, 1948), a movie that is almost universally considered a classic. 

So, what about Ladd?  There was a time when I went along with the conventional wisdom that although SHANE provides Ladd with his greatest movie and best performance, that he nevertheless did not possess the personality and talent needed for the role of the lone gunfighter.  However, over the course of watching this film many times, I’ve changed my views.

Ladd is excellent in his scenes with young Brandon De Wilde.  I’m not sure anybody could have been more believable.  The same is true regarding his scenes with Jean Arthur.  He was always good in his films when it came to dealing with personal relationships.

It is true that Ladd was a man of small stature (his boyhood name was ‘Tiny’) and many critics have pointed out that there is no way that he could have bested Chris Calloway (Johnson) or Joe Starrett in a brawl.  That is a little hard to accept, but what did those same critics say about the fight between slightly built Matt Garth (Montgomery Clift) and burly Tom Dunson (John Wayne) in RED RIVER?  I wonder.

Of course, a six-gun is an equalizer.  Therefore, a gunfighter doesn’t have to have great physical strength to be expert at that trade.  It is also true that real-life heroes do sometimes come in small packages.  Does the name Audie Murphy ring a bell?

Ladd’s presence didn’t hamper the film at the box office.  After all, he was at the peak of his popularity and was one of the most popular stars in Hollywood at the time that the film was released.

Although Ladd was not Stevens’ first choice, he did say that he thought the actor was perfect in the role.  That might be going too far.  There’s no doubt that a Gary Cooper or a Gregory Peck, for example, would have been better suited to the role, but I believe that Ladd was very good and a much better choice than Montgomery Clift.

At the time that SHANE was filmed, Jean Arthur had been off the screen for three years (five years by the time the film was released) and had appeared in only one film during the previous seven years.  Marian Starrett represented her last feature film role though she would later star in a brief TV series.

Despite being in her early fifties when the picture was filmed (Heflin was in his early forties and Ladd in his late thirties), she was very good as the homesteader’s faithful wife who is nevertheless attracted to the mysterious gunfighter.  The age difference between her and her two co-stars is not readily detectable and is of no consequence.

(L-R) Brandon De Wilde, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Alan Ladd

 

THE SUPPORTING CAST.

Brandon De Wilde, just nine-years-old at the time the movie was filmed, was considered to be a child prodigy – and deservedly so.  

He debuted on Broadway at age seven and completed almost 500 appearances in The Member of the Wedding.  

SHANE was his first film.  However, because it took George Stevens a year to edit the film, the movie version of THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING (Kramer/Columbia, 1952) was his first film to be released. 

In 1953-54, he even starred in Jaime (ABC), a weekly TV sitcom.  That would appear to be a daunting task for a youngster, but it was even more so since it was a live production.  If that wasn’t enough, he appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1952.

Other than SHANE, De Wilde’s best-known (and best-regarded) film is HUD (Paramount,1963). By that time he was twenty-years-old and had been acting for fourteen of them. 

Tragically, De Wilde died in an automobile accident.  He was only thirty-years-old.  (Two of De Wilde’s co-stars also died young.  Ladd was only fifty at the time of his death, while Heflin died at age sixty.)

For his performance in SHANE, De Wilde was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor.  Jack Palance, with only about a dozen lines of dialogue, was nominated for the same award in what was his fourth film.  It was his second nomination, the first coming the previous year for his role in only his third film, SUDDEN FEAR (RKO, 1952).  Almost forty years after SHANE, Palance received a third nomination for the award, and this time he won.  The film was CITY SLICKERS (Columbia, 1991).

Ben Johnson, looking larger and more mature than he did just a short time earlier when he was making his mark in a trio of John Ford Westerns, turns in one of the best performances in the film.  As one of Ryker’s ranch hands, Johnson appears at first to be the most arrogant of an arrogant crew.  He is the first to goad Shane into a fight with the result being a knockdown-drag out brawl.  However, in the end, Johnson’s Chris Calloway is a decent sort and when the chips are down that decency rises to the surface.

Shane being challenged by Chris Calloway (Ben Johnson)

The rest of the cast is superb.  And why not?  It had to be since it included such stalwarts as Edgar Buchanan, Elisha Cook, Jr., and John Dierkes.

THE DIRECTOR.

SHANE was George Stevens only Western, unless one counts ANNIE OAKLEY (RKO, 1935), and I don’t.  A meticulous craftsman, it took him over a year to prepare the film for release, and the wait was well-worth it.   For his efforts, Stevens was nominated for an Oscar as Best Director and the film received a Best Picture nomination.

I have only one quibble with his work on the film.  I didn’t like the fancy gun belt and holster worn by Ladd or his horse’s ostentatious bridle and saddle.  Both man and beast looked as though they belonged in one of Republic’s B-Westerns.  

It is hard to understand how this happened, since Stevens took such great pains to ensure that the costumes worn by the other actors were authentic.  He even went so far as to build a historically accurate town from scratch out in the middle of Jackson Hole, Wyoming,  so one would think that he would see that how Ladd and his horse appeared in the opening and closing scenes was a touch anachronistic.

George Stevens, Director

Okay, so I don’t think the movie is perfect.  I do think it is nevertheless a timeless classic Western.  After all, I have rated it as my third most favorite Western.

CINEMATOGRAPHY, LOCATIONS, AND WRITERS.

SHANE was nominated for six Academy Awards, but won only one.  The winning Oscar went to Loyal Griggs for his breathtakingly gorgeous photography.  Of course, he had a lot to work with, too.  Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with its Snake River Valley and majestic Grand Tetons as a backdrop, is one of the most stunningly beautiful places to be found anywhere in the world. Griggs specialized in Western productions during his career, filming a total of eleven.

Two of the writers involved in the production of the film rank among the greatest of all Western novelists.  Jack Schafer’s novel, published in 1949, is considered one of the best Western novels ever written.  Although he later moved to Santa Fe, at the time that he wrote Shane he had never been anywhere near the region he wrote about.  Nevertheless, he got it right.  One of his later novels, Monte Walsh, was filmed twice – once as a feature film and once as a TV movie.  Both are very good.

A.B. Guthrie, Jr. is best known for three critically acclaimed novels: The Big Sky, The Way West (winner of Pulitzer Prize in 1950), and These Thousand Hills.  All three were filmed, but with mixed results.  None of the three films came close to the high standards set by the novels and in all three cases Guthrie was unhappy with the results.  There might have been happier outcomes had Guthrie written the screenplays, but he did not.

In fact, SHANE was his first screenplay, and though he was nominated for an Oscar for his work, he wrote only one other, preferring to concentrate his time on his novels.

******

REVIEWS:    

“SHANE may well be the ultimate expression of the Western legend, but the film does have flaws….[It] strives too hard for its effects…and Alan Ladd wasn’t right for the part really….[but] despite its pretentiousness SHANE codified the essence of the Western, and it remains one of the few altogether towering movies of the genre….in the end it is a monumentally rewarding film on nearly any level: moving, entertaining, beautiful, even, perhaps, profound.”  -- Brian Garfield in Western Films: A Complete Guide

“Truly epic Western, among the best ever made….filmed with amazing skill by George Stevens, with some of the finest scenic values ever put on film.  There’s action, drama, fine performances.  A winner.” –- Steven H. Scheuer

“Shane wears a white hat and Palance [Jack Wilson] wears a black hat, but the buried psychology of this movie is a mottled, uneasy, fascinating gray.”  -- Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times

“…it is Master De Wilde with his bright face, his clear voice, and his resolute boyish ways, who steals the affections of the audience and clinches SHANE as a most unusual film.” –- Bosley Crowther in the New York Times

“Palance is unforgettable in role of creepy hired gunslinger.  Classic Western is splendid in every way.  Breathtaking cinematography by Loyal Griggs….” -- Leonard Maltin

And now for a couple of opposing viewpoints:

“While clearly it is a milestone film, if not a permanent classic, it is a film of diminishing returns and each viewing tends to leave one liking it a little less.  While the film rescued Alan Ladd from decline and made him a star again, his performance is still the weakest in the film when it should be the strongest….SHANE’s best performance comes from Ford’s protégé and player Ben Johnson.”  –- William K. Everson in A Pictorial History of the Western Film

“Once celebrated for its realism, in retrospect, SHANE, with its snow-capped vistas, De Wilde’s arch innocence, Ladd’s archetypal white-fringed, buckskin-suited hero and Palance’s demoniac villain, is clearly a Western that yearns for the innocent verities of Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, et al….In short the film is less an exploration of such Western clichés as ‘a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,’ than a mature version of ‘Heigh Ho Silver.’  -- Phil Hardy in The Western

 “Shane…Shane…come back Shane!  Bye Shane!" – Joey Starrett