Shane (1953)

(On Cable TV, November 2019) Often hailed as a western genre classic, it’s worth wondering if Shane still holds up today. Many of its innovations—notably its use of widescreen colour cinematography, as one of the first films to be produced in a format aiming to outclass television—could be seen as temporary and outclassed by several better movies. The then-shocking use of violence and reflections on its consequences, for instance, marked a departure from the trigger-happy standard of the genre throughout the 1930s and 1940s but was soon outclassed by far bloodier westerns to come in the next decades. But thanks to director George Stevens, there’s a welcome texture and complexity to Shane that works even today—layers of subtlety overlaid over the “gunman comes to a divided town” classic plot template. Forbidden attraction between the mysterious protagonist and a married woman; longing for permanent fatherhood; some acknowledgement of the costs of violence; and that classic ambiguous finale that skirts between a poignant finale and a feel-good one. (I could do with less of the kid, though.)  Add to that the still-effective colourful widescreen cinematography and, yes, Shane does remain a reference all these years later: sometimes outclassed, but no less effective on the fundamentals.