John Whitehead's Commentary
Shane! Shane! Come Back!
Joey, there's no living with, with a killing. There's no going back from it. Right or wrong, it's a brand, a brand that sticks. There's no going back. Now you run on home to your mother and tell her, tell her everything's alright, and there aren't any more guns in the valley. --Shane
When I was a child growing up in the 1950s, movies were not merely entertainment--they were magic. There in the darkness of the theater, I could fly on Arabian carpets with Sinbad or fight it out on the sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne. I could hide my cares and forget about the drudgery of school. And above all else, I could visit my heroes over and over again.
Once upon a time, American heroes inhabited movies that were free of the language, sex and violence that keeps children out of theaters today. But these films weren't merely so-called family fare--that is, Disneyesque movies geared primarily to make financial profits from unwary parents. They were about people who had a moral code that they would not bend, even at the price of death.
I came to know one such hero when I was only seven years old. It was fifty years ago this summer that my father took me to see Shane, an experience I will never forget. Now considered by many as the greatest western ever made, it garnered six Oscar nominations and was remade by Clint Eastwood in 1985 as Pale Rider.
Shane was beautifully filmed in the great Wyoming outdoors under the towering peaks of the Grand Tetons. It is fitting scenery for the age-old story of the duel between good and evil, the advent of civilization (with families, law and order and homesteaders) and the move of progress into the wilderness (a world of roaming cattlemen, lawless gunslingers and loners on horseback), a land dispute conflict between a homesteader and a cattle baron and the coming of age of a young boy.
But Shane is primarily the story of a hero who is larger than life. Shane (Alan Ladd) is a gunfighter who chooses his causes based on principle. He shoots to kill only when reason fails and then only after exhausting less deadly means of settlement. As a blond-haired superman in buckskin, Shane radiates spirituality.
The genius of Shane is that the story is told from the point of view of a small boy, Joey, who comes to idolize the mysterious gunslinger. Joey's father, Joe Starrett, is a small homesteader who is threatened by cattleman Rufus Ryker, who wants to tear down Starrett's fences to let his cattle roam free. In the opening scene of the film, Ryker and his men threaten Starrett. They are eventually scared off as Shane, who has stopped to water his horse, picks Starrett as a cause to defend.
Shane's counterpoint is Wilson, a ruthless gunfighter who enjoys killing. Hired by Ryker to bring the homesteaders into line, Wilson is dark, dresses in black and even drinks his black coffee from a blackened pot. He's so evil that when he peers over the swinging saloon doors, the barroom dog quickly slinks out of his way.
Wilson's heinous character is tellingly portrayed in one of the most memorable scenes ever shot on film. Torrey, a homesteader who refuses to be buffaloed by the cattlemen, rides into town, ignoring the warnings of friends that Wilson is a killer. As Torrey gingerly picks his way across the muddy wagon ruts in the road toward the saloon, Wilson, on the town's wooden sidewalk, mirrors him step by step like a rattlesnake tracking his prey. But Torrey never even makes it to the saloon's porch before he is killed, blown backward into the mud by the force of Wilson's exploding pistol.
Joey, like the rest of us kids who saw the film in theaters, viewed Shane with starry-eyed admiration. He was a father figure who teaches Joey how to fire a gun. And during a fight scene, Joey watches proudly as Shane slugs it out with the heavies at the town saloon--but not before warning him not to fight. "But there's too many, Shane" he proclaims. "You wouldn't want me to run away, would you?" Shane replies.
Like many westerns before and since, Shane ultimately comes down to a shootout in a barroom. Indeed, the whole movie builds toward the inescapable fact that Shane must eventually face Wilson and the other thugs who hang around the saloon. First, however, he must physically subdue Joe Starrett to prevent him from going to town, where he would surely be killed. Shane then dons his pearl-handled revolver and heads across country on his horse for the showdown, with little Joey running closely behind.
Whereas Ryker's gunmen will do anything to gun Shane down--even shoot him in the back--Shane fights fair. Like the samurai or medieval knight before him, Shane has a code. And although he is a complex character with obvious issues, Shane never lets anything get in the way of principle.
Shane holds up well against anything on the screen today. Director George Stevens, in telling his story without gimmicks, did not cast his movie with action figures, as would happen today. All the characters struggle with ideas and issues and the concept that good and evil do exist--and as Shane seems to say, if good people take stands, then good can prevail.
The only thing left unresolved in this great film is the fate of Shane. As he rides off, he slumps, wounded in the shootout at the saloon--a man willing to risk his life to protect the innocent. And as we see him fading into the mountain pines, we hear Joey screaming, "Shane! Shane! Come back!" If only he would. We sure could use a hero like Shane today.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about the Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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