原野奇侠

发生在阿拉巴马，严格来说不算个西部故事，有关于西部的那些主题，土地与人权，钉子户搬迁，荒野中来的人，奋斗和建设家园，却具有独特性，不像一半的故事具有传奇色彩，只是平凡的农民斗地主，人人都被潜在的危险所威胁却少有人真正去做法外之徒，最大的动作场面是酒馆斗殴；也不像另一半那样具有真实性，一个第四者闯入三口之家然而什么也没发生，丈夫开心看着妻子和别人眉来眼去，孩子眼中的世界太高大因他没见过真的西部，甚至还有少许歧视意味，在美国少数人口最多也是种族歧视最为严重的几个州之一，全片连一个黑人或者印第安人都没出现，有钱人看不起穷苦人，南方农场主大肆叫嚣着要Yankees滚开。最后获得奥斯卡提名，和金尼曼《乱世忠魂》相比可谓完败。

SHANE, adapted from Jack Schaefer’s popular novel, is George Steven’s eulogy of a bygone civilization, the West as we know it. Its rub is pivoted around the hard-pressed homesteaders against the grasping prior trailblazers, who cannot brook the land they have been fighting for with sweat and blood, to be shared with peace-loving late comers. It all comes down to a gunslinger, our titular hero Shane (Ladd) to solve the problem, once and for all.

Unlike other trigger-happy cowpokes, Shane is perversely reluctant to shoot, apparently afflicted by some unexplained past trauma, he comes off as rather shell-shocked and doesn’t even brings his six-shooter with him when he goes to town, much to the bewilderment of a 10-year-old boy Joey Starrett (De Wilde), who puts Shane on a pedestal ever since his advent to the Starretts’ turf.

Hired by Joey’s father Joe (Heflin) to work in their land, Shane literally becomes another member of the nuclear family, heightened by a tangible mutual feeling between him and Joe’s wife Marian (Arthur), neither of them acts improperly, but there is chemistry simmering underneath their restrained formalities, which even Joe descries but he is also prudent enough to keep the green-eyed monster at bay.

The conflict escalates when their nemesis, the Ryker brothers, going out of their ways to scare and harass homesteaders off the land for their cattle business, hires a notorious gunfighter Jack Wilson (Palance), who viciously baits and dispatches anyone who is hot-headed enough to draw the gun, Frank Torrey (Cook Jr.) falls to his victim, however, during his funeral, the homesteaders are held together by Joe and decide to stand on their grounds, which prompts the Ryker brothers to set a trap to liquidate Joe, after a dusty brotherly brawl amid skittish horses and Marian’s screaming, it is Shane who takes Joe’s place to attend the treacherous invitation, with Joey secretively tailing behind to witness the final showdown, executed with a quick-fire fashion that invites pause and rewind. When the dust settles, a wounded (mortally or not, Stevens leaves us to guess) Shane chooses to leave as he confesses there is no place for a man who has blood on his hands, with Joey’s wail “Come back, Shane” resounds in the crescendo,

A stoical Alan Ladd is forever enshrined in Shane’s laconic, reserved persona and he is the unlikely hero excels in rough-and-tumble with a short stature, but the truth is, Van Heflin offers a more well-rounded performance as the ultimately congenial and sympathetic Joe, as for Jean Arthur, in her first color movie and celluloid swan song, hampered by an unflattering wig and over-airbrushed effort of the make-up team, she, at the very least, hangs tough through the familial dissension as a dyed-in-the-wool nay-sayer of the gun violence, that particularly rings a bell in today’s climate.

Receiving 6 Oscar nominations in toto (including BEST PICTURE, SCREENPLAY and DIRECTOR), one for the amazing tween actor Brandon De Wilde (who would sadly perish in a car accident at an age of 30), who benefits from the fact that the meat of the story takes place from his idolized standpoint, persuasively visualizes a wide-eyed boy’s vicarious thrills and spills without becoming overtly cutesy or annoying, too many bratty kids in real life already, no one needs to see them throw a hissy fit on the big screen. Also Jack Palance cops a back-to-back Oscar nomination after his breakthrough in David Miller’s SUDDEN FEAR (1952), brimful of vice and danger, his villainous turn is a real spine-tingler.

Equipped with a divinely colorful Technicolor to render a beauteous natural landscape, SHANE judiciously deviates from the mainstream Western with its prescience of its westering future, yet proposes an auspicious prospect on the horizon of the pending modern age, while those who are passé get a melancholic solace that at any rate, some good deeds are done, a few good seeds are sowed and some bad apples are annihilated. Lastly, one advise, dialing down the volume can save yourself from the assault of Victor Young’s blaring, overblown aural accompaniment, which aids our appreciation of George Stevens’ deathless classic of a defiant hero named SHANE.

referential entries: George Stevens’ GIANT (1956, 8.3/10), Fred Zinnermann’s HIGH NOON (1952, 8.0/10).

看《Logan》的时候就对电影里出现的两段《Shane》的台词印象十分深刻，后来才发现两部片子很多地方都是遥相呼应的。

“A man has to be what he is, Joey.Can’t break the mould.” “There's no living with a killing. There's no going back from one. Right or wrong, it's a brand，a brand 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.”这两段台词放在狼叔身上也毫不违和，生活大抵是这样没有选择又无可奈何。

很明显，这位不是小羊肖恩，是杀手肖恩。西部片最让人热爱的元素，复仇肯定是排在最前面的，当然，几乎所有犯罪片，复仇也是重要的吸引观众的环节。

一开始，如所有游侠一样，肖恩永远是居无定所的，他们的存在就是各种行侠仗义，这一点我小时候不太懂。比如，像《七侠荡寇志》中，尤伯.连纳被问去哪里时候，总是只指某个方向，不会有什么具体的business,这估计就是西部片武侠片的一个固定概念。

说是像浓缩版的《智取威虎山》，是因为电影一开始，就是典型的杨子荣《深山问苦》，乔一家一开始就是被地主富农阶级压迫到无路可走，他们盼星星盼月亮，终于盼来了侠客肖恩。在关键时候，进口版杨子荣，替他们家复了仇，消灭了地主阶级和其帮凶，还当地老百姓一片安宁和生存的空间。

男主那忧郁的眼神，的确让几乎所有观众痴迷，连我看到最后，都不舍得肖恩离开，希望他跟《七侠荡寇志》中的年轻帅小伙一样，留下来，找个美丽的女孩，从此过上童话般的生活。但很明显，这部片子肯定没这种安排，游侠就是要到处游，到处行侠仗义才行，况且女主已经有老公的，不能宣传错误的价值观。

好吧，一切如其他西部复仇片那样爽，即浪漫又刺激。唯一最大的败笔，就是小孩JOEY，真特么讨厌，从电影一开始。总是肖恩，肖恩个没完，让人非常厌烦，感觉这家人是不是养了个智障，导演是需要批评的，小孩的内心世界可以独白，可以旁白，但是太多废话，就让整部片子失去该有的韵味了。