SPOILER ALERT
Story
Shane rides into the Starret homestead, heading north. The purpose of this journey, if such there be, is not revealed. Joe Starrett is suspicious of what is obviously a gunman, especially when Ryker, the local big rancher simultaneously arrives with yet another demand that Starrett and the other homesteaders get out. It becomes clear that Ryker is conducting a campaign of harassment against the squatters in order to maintain the open range for his cattle.
When it becomes clear that Shane is not involved, he and Starrett become friends and this is symbolised by their joint effort to uproot a tree-stump, the scene portentously shot, edited and scored for maximum emotional impact. It's clear also that Starrett's wife, Marion, is drawn to the handsome, soft-spoken but dangerous stranger; and that their son, Joey, from whose point of view much of the drama is seen, already hero-worships him.
Shane interrupts his journey, takes off his gun and sets to work for Starrett. When Ryker loses patience and hires the black-clad, snake -like killer, Wilson, to root out the settlers at whatever cost, the crisis comes to a head. One of the farmers is murdered, 'legally', and Ryker hatches a plot to kill Starrett, a natural community leader, at a 'peace conference'. Shane intervenes and in a fight shot to parallel the earlier stump-pulling prevents the other man from attending the meeting.
He challenges Wilson in professional style and kills him, as well as Ryker. Joey, as ever observing, watches Shane re-holster with a memorable flourish, a flashy hint of pride in a job well done, then shouts out a warning that Ryker's brother has the drop on him. Shane is wounded but still kills the other man.
Then, following a little moral lecture to Joey, he rides away, heedless of the boy's pleas: 'Shane, come back . . .I love you . . .Mother loves you!'
Style
With Shane George Stevens wanted, it seems, to take a routine story and present it with fresh depth, with a combination of realism and cinematic beauty. In telling it through the eyes of a child he can merge reality into legend.
The film is set in a valley, not just beautiful but obviously fertile, the kind of place for which men would kill and die, but the small town in it and the the settlers' homes are makeshift at best, squalid at worst.
Stevens emphasises the terrifying loudness of Shane's initial display of gunfire and the brutality of Stonewall's death in a muddy street, but he also achieves the effect of Wilson's effortless and graceful mounting of his horse by running backwards film of him dismounting. The deer's antlers' framing of Shane when he first rides in is well-known, but Stevens uses the same trick when Stonewall storms out through the saloon door, smashing a hole through which we see Ryker, his brother and Wilson, silent and malevolent.
Such things draw attention to themselves and are, to my mind, a flaw to which Stevens was prone.
Themes
For all that the film ends withe defeat and the death of 'bad guys', we nonetheless leave it with a feeling of melancholy. The victory of the settlers is tempered by the departure of their glamorous champion, the fracture of a family and the passing of an heroic way of life.
The friendship of Starrett and Shane is close. Forget homosexuality, but watch their shared pleasure in uprooting the stump together and taking on a bunch of cowboys in the saloon. Starrett is a man shackled to the treadmill of his farm, with just a woman and boy for company. His other acquaintances are a group of timorous neighbours, who have no strength but what he gives them. Only Shane shares his resolution, but complements his stolidity with style and deadly skill.
But it is a doomed friendship. One is a settler, one a wanderer. And there is Marion. Their last meeting is a vicious fight for the right to face Ryker and Wilson. Shane's motive is to save Starrett's life, for the sake of Marion; Joe's to prove himself a man in her eyes. Shane, fighting unfairly for once, uses his gun to knock out his opponent before taking his gun, with obvious phallic symbolism.
Marion's contentment with life is shattered. From now on, she will know that there is a man she prefers to her husband, and whom she has now lost forever. Moreover she has blurted out her frustration with the grinding toil of her daily life. If that has improved, now that Ryker is dead, that improved has been achieved by the use of guns, something she has opposed. She knows too that Joey's fascination with guns has been reinforced by the role model of Shane.
Joey has lost his surrogate father and senses the estrangement between his parents.
Ryker is no typical villain. He is even given the opportunity to put his case, the case of all conservatives who see a world they love passing. His methods are violent, but not murderous at first. In turning to Wilson, he is betraying what moral code he has. Compare him with Ben Johnson's Calloway, a bullying cowboy eventually repelled by the murder of Stonewall.
Ryker is proud of opening up the territory, defeating Indians and rustlers and imposing his own law for want of any other. Now he sees all he has done is clear the way for others with alien values. Not only is official law approaching, with a marshal a hundred miles away, but it is brought to his doorstep by 'squatters' bearing bits of legal paper.
Shane is like Ryker, a man whose days are past, although 'not quite yet' as he says, contemplating one last job to be performed in the old-fashioned way.
We know nothing of Shane's past, but we note his lightning reaction to the cocking of a gun. He remarks with disapproval on the number of fences near Starrett's land. He says he is heading North. Where? Perhaps he is another Wilson, on his way to work for another Ryker. If he helps Starrett, it is for personal reasons, but not because of self-interest.
If John Wayne had played the part - and it has affinities with Ethan Edwards and Hondo - instead of Alan Ladd, I doubt that we would have perceived the inner sadness of the man, as he contemplates the the woman he can never have, the son who will never be born to him, the friend he must hurt, the open land he must watch carved up and the life he must lose.
Some say he is dead at the end of the film. I cannot say, but he is a dead man riding.
Conclusion
So are there any winners? As the old guy says at the end of The Magnificent Seven, 'Only the farmers have won.' Who are these farmers who have replaced the pioneering Ryker and the heroic Shane?
They are a pusillanimous crowd, only able to survive if they find a strong leader and someone not afraid to fight their fights for them. These are the men who despise Shane for initially refusing to fight, then worrying about the consequences for them when he does, who call his profession 'murder'. One is a comic Swede, one a boastful old soldier, another lazy drunk, their women plain and dowdy. Only the Starretts have class. And even they will help turn the wide open spaces into little parcels of suburbia, happily growing their 'taters' and rearing their hogs.
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