If there was a movie I could identify as the favorite film of my late mother, it would probably be Shane which was made in 1952. It starred Alan Ladd in his most famous role, a gunfighter trying to escape his path, but who is forced by circumstance into his old life, in order to defend the innocent.
As I trype this I am watching this on Turner Classic Movies. It was famously shot in glorious Technicolor in the open country around the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. It is probably the most famous depiction of this range in film.
The story has a Zen-like simiplicty to it, slow moving like the open frontier itself, but then bursting into a fury in episodes, including the famous climax pitting good versus evil.
Against it all is the famous supporting performance by 10-year old Brandon de Wilde as Joey, who idolizes the stranger who rides into the family ranch one day and changes their lives.
For my mother was a lifelong feminist, before it particularly popular. It is easy to see in retrospect that so much of this was driven by her frustration is finding the strong masculinity of her own father, a World War II veteran. She spoke of the character Ladd made famous on screen with almost romantic dreaminess, in the same tones as the little boy in the movie, repeating key lines, including the famous parting words at the end. As such the character Shane is somewhat embedded in me as the ideal of the masculine--stoic, reticent, strong and protective. This is probably true for many boys raised in the post-war years. I may have been one of the last ones to experience Shane in that way. It might be fair to say that the character Shane is embedded into the psyche of the men of the Baby Boomer generation in a way that was impossible to live up to.
As for myself, I noticed that the movie is a good example of my theory of the "Magic Cow of Happiness". Thas my pet idea that the depiction of cattle in a Hollywood movie mirrors the theme and emotion of the story at large. The very first use of cattle we see at the ranch is as Shane arrives. We see a cow with calf beside it. The calf is the little boy Joey.
The movie came out at what might be called the peak of American Post-war culture. It is about as "straight" of a western as one will find, perhaps the archetypal 1950s western reflecting the ideas of American culture at the time. At the time my mother was probably the same age as the little boy in the movie.
One element of the movie that stands out prominently as making it a "classic western" is that the action takes place "100 miles from the nearest U.S. marshal." It is about Americans attempting to create civilization in the absence of governmental authority. This is the unique feature of American westerns, and reflects the unique self-organization of us as the American people. Classically it is the essence of American liberty, the bedrock of our idea of ourselves as a free people. By the 1950s we had developed the structure of government but still felt ourselves in contact with the old model in living memory. Arguably this has retreated in our culture, as had the classic ideals of masculine protectiveness. Men today yearn to fill that role but often feel frustrated in that. We believe ourselves less and less to be a self-organizing people with each passing day.
Now I'm going to watch the rest of the film. It's been a long time.
