Brandon de Wilde

With 3 of the best movies actors of the era - Alan Llad, Van Heflin & Jean Arthur, 'Shane' ranks as one of the best Westerns & a great movie any genre. The mysterious strangers comes to the valley to save the homesteaders from the evil cattle baron's hired killer. Sounds trite but the superb writing & acting, the great gunfight scene between Alan Llad & Jack Palance (what a great villain) & scenes at the homesteader's farm raises it way above the mundain. B-T-W, Eastwoods 'Pale Rider' was a tribute the 'Shane'.

This "classic" does not actually wear very well. It has an at times almost offensively melodramatic score, the acting is uneven (Brandon De Wilde quickly becomes irritating and Jean Arthur is sometimes silly in her overacting) and the violence becomes gratuitous. The setting is spectacular, and Alan Ladd plays his part well. But the script is actually thin and predictable. Worth seeing because of its place in the cinema history of the 1950s, but not much more.