Shane

Wyoming, 1889. A gunfighter who will not talk about his past takes work on the Starrett homestead. A big cattleman is trying to drive the small farmers off their land and the pressure grows every week. Shane tries to put down his gun, and when the other side brings in a hired killer named Jack Wilson that becomes impossible. Joey, the family's small son, watches all of it, and the last line of the film is his. George Stevens directed and produced. Alan Ladd plays Shane, Jean Arthur plays Marian, Van Heflin plays Joe Starrett, Brandon deWilde plays Joey and Jack Palance plays Jack Wilson. It opened on 23 April 1953. The sound design changed the genre. Until then a gunshot on screen was a dry crack; Stevens fired a large-calibre weapon into a garbage can to get a cannon-like report. For the first time you heard the weight of what a bullet does. It was one of the first films in Paramount's 1.66:1 widescreen format. The budget was 1.5 million dollars and it returned 9 million in United States and Canadian rentals. It won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography and was nominated for Best Director, Best Picture and two supporting performances. It sits 45th on the AFI hundred films list and third among westerns, and entered the National Film Registry in 1993. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 97 percent. Who it is for: viewers who like classic westerns and films that show violence without glorifying it. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. The film waits at length and only a handful of shots are fired in the whole of it.