YOU'LL FIND a nice retrospective essay in today's Wall Street Journal's "Review" section on the great western movie, "Shane," on the occasion of its sixtieth birthday. It's the best movie ever made about the myth (in the nonpejorative sense of the word; see below) of the gunfighter as chivalric hero.
The law did not exist on the frontier, and the nearest marshal . . .
. . . was three days' ride away. So when Shane comes riding out of the high plains, en route for "somewhere I ain't been yet," he provides much-needed moral and physical assistance to [Joe Starrett (Van Heflin)] and his community.
. . . .
. . . . Shane, riding tall against the ominous sky, represents a kind of one-man Cavalry. Haunted by an undisclosed past, he seems condemned to wanter the horizon forever in search of redemption. He leaves an indelible impression on young Joey Starrett (Brandon De Wilde), who begins to perceive that a gun is only as good or as bad as the man who wields it.
. . . .
Parts of "Shane" may seem naive -- even corny -- today, and the idealism and moral stance of Joe Starrett strike an awkward note in a 21st century where cynicism tends to rule.
(Peter Cowie, "One-Man Cavalry in the Lawless West," Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2013)
"Shane" should be grouped with "High Noon (1952)," "Key Largo" (1948), and other similar films of the era as studies of the American attitude toward World War II. All feature a hero with the courage and skill to stand up to evil men, but reluctant to do so. At some point they must, of course, to restore law and peace, violently, to the corrupt world.
These movies resonated with the former G.I.'s and their brides in the audience because that was America's experience and their experience. America was reluctant to engage in Europe's war, but deadly when we did engage. The movies fully explore the reluctance, but unambiguously ennoble the moral decision to kill in defense of law and decency, most powerfully perhaps when Sheriff Will Kane's (Gary Cooper's) Quaker wife Amy (Grace Kelly), a pacifist, shoots one of the bad guys in the back as he draws a bead on her husband.
Movies of self-defense and revenge are always with us, from "Straw Dogs" (meek husband responds violently to protect and avenge his wife) to Charles Bronson's "Death Wish" series (a grieving husband and father takes down street gangsters) through the Dirty Harry franchise and on to almost every movie Mel Gibson has ever made.
None has ever measured up to "Shane," "High Noon," or "Key Largo," with the possible exception of the brilliant "Witness." It's about a cop, John Book (Harrison Ford), who is shot while defending Samuel (Lukas Haas), who witnessed a murder by corrupt Philadelphia policemen who are now out to silence him.
"Witness" deals even better with the pacifist theme. Officer Book recuperates among the Amish. When the bad guys attack, he kills all except one. As that officer prepares to kill Book, young Samuel makes the moral decision that saves the noble policeman and defines the movie. As in the cowboy movies, the hero of "Witness" rides into the sunset at the end.
Naive and corny these movies may have been, but using the devices of movie-making, they helped feed the hunger of America and Americans to understand and agree on the meaning of the war. To help cultivate a national myth, if you will, meaning a legend or story that, while fictional, helps teach important moral lessons about who we are and how we should conduct ourselves. Literature, in other words.
These movies affirm things that always need affirming, about good and evil, honor, law, duty, decency, and -- let me say it -- manhood.
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