Plot Synopsis (continued)
As
the wagons ride into town, they are framed against the magnificent
mountains and the countryside, with the sky filled with dark clouds
and thunder - a foreshadowing of approaching trouble. When the homesteaders
enter the store, one of Ryker's boys derides the group: "They
brought all their women with them to protect 'em." In the store,
Marion admires a canning mason jar ("My, my, my, what will they
think of next?") Joe looks at a Sears Roebuck store catalogue
from the East, full of products that represent manufacturing progress
- fine gentlemen's hats and caps, long underwear, etc.
Shane returns Joey's soda pop bottle in the saloon
and is again taunted there by poker-playing Calloway who announces "sodbuster" Shane's
entry: "Well now, lookey here what we've got. That's one of
the new ones. We call him 'sody-pop.'" This time when threatened
by Calloway to leave ("Look, pig farmer, you'd better get back
inside with the women and kids where it's safe...Did you think you
were gonna come in here and drink with the men?"), Shane orders
two whiskey drinks and tosses one at Calloway's shirt and one in
his face. He then punches Calloway in the face, sending him sailing
through the saloon door into the supply store. This provokes one
of the most rousing and bloodiest, bar-room fist fights ever recorded
on film, as they circle around each other. Hero-worshipping Joey
watches in fascination from the side. The real coward Fred Lewis
leaves the store fearing the worst: "This is bad, this is bad...This
ain't our fight. If we get mixed up in it, we'll all get run out
of this country." And the other homesteaders fear retaliation
if they join Shane. Shane eventually gets the upper hand by himself,
and subdues his bloody-faced, dazed opponent.
Witnessing his brawling skills ("I could use a
man like you"), Ryker vainly offers to hire Shane for double
what Starrett is paying him but Shane isn't interested and turns
him down: "I like workin' for Starrett...It's no use."
Ryker can't believe Shane's answer: "What are you lookin'
for?" After his first offer fails, Ryker then resorts to insult
- he insinuates that Shane is interested in Joe's wife:
Ryker: (musing) Pretty wife Starrett's got.
Shane: Why, you dirty, slinkin' old man!
The second round - a larger fight - develops when Ryker
threatens to run Shane out of town ("We're gonna ride you out
of this valley, Shane") after being rejected. Joey runs into
the scene and cautions Shane: "Shane, come on...But Shane. There's
too many." But Shane replies that he won't back down and will
stay and face them, even though all of Ryker's men are ready to gang
up on him. Shane is soon outnumbered.
Seeing Shane in trouble, Joey runs and informs his
father ("the town is gonna kill Shane"), who quickly vows
to act like a man alongside Shane ("What Ryker's got comin'
to him ain't fit for a woman to see"). The two fight as allies
and take on the entire pack, until Grafton pleads for peace and declares
the sod-busters the winners: "Stop it! You fools. You've had
enough of it. You'll all get killed."
Knowing he has been defeated and that he must raise
the stakes, an outraged Ryker sends for a gunslinger. He recruits
a cold-blooded hired gun from Cheyenne to bait and kill the helpless
homesteaders. He promises a more deadly outcome the next time around:
I'm through fooling, Grafton. From now on when we
fight with them, the air is gonna be filled with gunsmoke.
Back at the farm that night after a triumphant fight,
the two warrior's wounds are treated by Marion, as she compliments
them: "It was ugly and you were both wonderful." Joey watches
in awe and admires the two victorious, but bruised fighters - believing
that they are invincible and oblivious to pain: "I'll bet you
two could lick anyone." Jokingly, Shane blurts out a loud
"Ouch" as she brushes turpentine on his forehead. Joey then
tells his mother, as she tucks him into bed behind the closed door
of his room, of his admiration and love for Shane - within earshot
of Shane:
Joey: Mother, I just love Shane.
Marion: Do you?
Joey: I love him almost as much as I love Pa. That's all right, isn't
it?
Marion: He's a fine man.
Joey: He's so good. Don't you like him, Mother? (Shane exits from
the living room to the outside)
Marion: Yes, I like him too, Joey.
Shane has begun to be almost as important to Joey as
his own father, and very attractive to Marion. When she returns to
the main living room and looks toward the direction that Shane has
taken, she has a dreamy gaze in her eyes and unspoken affection for
him. [Is she contemplating following him into the barn?] Unable to
trust her own emotions and feelings, she asks her husband to tightly
hold her. The family unit is restored as Joey calls out to everyone:
Joe: What's the matter, honey?
Marion: Joe. Hold me. Don't say anything. Just hold me - tight. (They
enter their bedroom together and close the door.)
Joey: Goodnight, Mom.
Marion: Goodnight, Joey.
Joey: Goodnight, Pa.
Joe: Goodnight, son.
Joey: Goodnight, Shane!
And then on Independence Day, Ryker's evil, mean, murderous,
merciless, hired gunman Wilson (Walter Jack Palance in the credits),
with ominous music, rides into town (purposely on a small horse to
accentuate his badness). Wearing a diabolical black hat, vest and
two guns, he is tall and serpentine, and walks with jangling spurs.
When he peers over the swinging saloon doors, even the saloon dog
looks up and quickly slinks out of his way. Wilson enters and after
an immediate dissolve, is a few steps further along (and filmed from
the waist down) - until he walks out of the frame. He announces that
he has been summoned by Ryker, who is upstairs and asleep in a room
above the saloon. Appropriately, Wilson drinks black coffee from
a dark black pot. Wilson has been hired to enforce cattle interests
against the determined homesteaders in the valley led by Starrett.
To provoke more conflict in the range war, Ryker's
cowhands kill Ernie Lewis' sow and terrorize his family: "Kept
shootin' and yellin' what they'd do next. Woke up the kid and scared
the missus half to death." He decides to call it quits - using
a poker analogy: "I said I'd stay for one more hand. This is
it. I've had enough of Ryker." And on Independence Day, Ryker's
cattle herds are deliberately directed onto the pig farmer's land
to trample the "plowed ground." The ineffectual anger of
his neighbor Torrey builds toward the Rykers: "Starrett
and the rest of us are gonna take the juice out of him (pause) one
of these days."
The fences of Mr. Wright and Mr. Shipstead have also been cut as further
provocations. While Shane is tightening up the Starrett's barbed wire
fence, Joey questions what Shane would do if he confronted the culprits,
but Shane dodges the macho question:
Joey: What would you do if you caught them
cutting our fence?
Shane: Well, I'd ask 'em to please go around by the gate.
Joey: Aw, Shane.
On the Starrett farm, Marion has opened an old trunk
in her bedroom to look for a suitable dress for the day's celebratory
party. She discovers her tissue-wrapped wedding dress and lovingly
takes it out. Not satisfied with Shane's earlier answer, Joey again
asks Shane in the barn why he doesn't wear his six-shooter. [Note
the film's second major blooper - through the open barn door,
notice the dark-colored vehicle in the far distance moving from left
to right just above the top vertical fence post]. Joey confesses
how he was mesmerized by the weapon:
Joey: Why don't you ever wear your six-shooter, Shane?
Shane: Well, I guess I don't see as many bad men as you do.
Joey: ...I saw your gun in there one day. I took a look at it.
Shane: (taken aback and slightly stunned) Oh.
Joey: Are you mad?
Shane: No, I guess not. If I were you Joey, I'd leave a thing like
this alone.
Joey: I wrapped it up careful in the blanket again.
Shane: Well, that's a good boy.
Joey: Could I see it again? You promised you'd show me how to shoot.
(pleading) Please!
In one of the key scenes of the film, Shane agrees
to teach Joey how to shoot (after his father admitted earlier that
he was too busy to teach him). Shane lectures the boy on the proper
positioning of his play wooden gun and holster and the preferences
of different gunfighters ("most of 'em have tricks of their
own"):
Shane: One, for instance, likes to have a shoulder
holster. Another one puts it in his - the belt of his pants. And
there are some who like two guns. But one's all you need if you
can use it.
Joey: Which is the best way?
Shane: What I'm telling you is a good a way as any and better than
most.
He then demonstrates his quick-draw ability and how
to accurately pick off a white rock in the distance. The gunfire
is deafeningly loud as he pummels it with bullets. Joey's eyes widen
and he whistles between his teeth: "Gosh Almighty. That is GOOD!" Marion,
standing quietly in the background wearing her full-skirted silvery-white
wedding dress, has a concerned look on her face as she witnesses
his prowess. She interrupts and criticizes him for initiating her
young boy into young manhood by passing on his values. She resists
Joey's move toward growing up. Shane defends learning about guns,
explaining how he uses restraint:
Marion: Guns aren't going to be my boy's life.
Joey: Why do you always have to spoil everything? (Joey kicks the
white rock and points his pistol at it, imitating Shane's behavior: "Bang,
bang.")
Shane: A gun is a tool, Marion. No better and no worse than any other
tool - an axe, a shovel, or anything. A gun is as good or as bad
as the man using it. Remember that.
Marion: We'd all be much better off if there wasn't a single gun
left in this valley - including yours.
At that moment, Joe arrives at the homestead and is
charmed by the sight of his wife wearing her wedding dress ("Well,
look at that woman...!"). In town, rowdy townsfolk celebrate
the holiday with a rodeo. At a saloon table with Wilson's back to
the camera, Ryker concedes that he has kept things gun-free up to
this point: "You know I want to be reasonable, but something's
got to give...Look, I've gone along with the new law - I've stayed
away from gunplay. Yeah, sure, I've kind of buffaloed the sodbusters,
but you've got to admit, Sam, my men have kept their six-guns cased." Sam
Grafton glances at Wilson, now shot from the front, and asks: "And
now?"
During the holiday's festivities, Torrey enters town
for a drink in the saloon. To display his courage with a bold
toast, he accuses Ryker of successfully running off Ernie Lewis -
one of the homesteaders. He calls it "a
downright dirty shame. That's all he had and he worked hard for it." Feisty,
Torrey boasts that he is not a coward: "He's runnin' because
he's a coward. And here's to me cause I ain't a coward and you ain't
gettin' my claim. You can't scare me any more than you can Joe Starrett..." Torrey
proposes another toast "to the independence of the greatest
state in the Union - here's to the independence of the sovereign
state of Alabama." After being allowed to courageously bluster
about his lack of cowardice, Torrey breaks some of the louvred panels
on the swinging saloon door as he exits. (The splintered opening
of the panel frames the faces of the three leering gunmen.)
The horizontal panels dissolve into the red and white
stripes of a waving American flag. The early settlers celebrate with
fireworks and square dancing. Torrey (the "Reb") arrives
late and drunk to the Fourth of July party (the celebration of US
independence) that coincides with the 10th wedding anniversary of
the Starretts, symbolic of their populist status as homesteaders
in the new democracy. [Brown-attired Joe dances with Marion, but
in the same dance after a few brief cutaways, it appears that a blue-attired
Shane has taken her as a partner, and Joe is dancing with a younger
woman.]
Under a curved tree branch with his wife attired in
her wedding dress, Joe testifies to the group as the couple's marriage
anniversary is honored: "I gave up my independence ten years
ago today - but no man ever gave it up as easy as I did - and what's
more, I wouldn't trade places with any man in this world." After
they kiss, the settlers sing Abide With Me. In Joe's arms,
Marion looks back at the other two men in her life - Shane with his
arm around Joey's shoulder. During the double celebration, Shane
dances with Marion to the authentic square dance tune of "Put
Your Little Foot." "Fenced out," Joe oddly senses
the mutual attraction growing between them.
During a break, Torrey brags about his encounter with
Ryker and a gunfighter in town, described sketchily: "Packs
two guns, kinda lean, he wears a black hat." Shane instantly
identifies the gunfighter from the Cheyenne area: "There's a
man named Wilson that looks like that...If it is Wilson, he's fast
- fast on the draw. You should be careful with him." Fred Lewis
presents the obvious conclusion: "What's a gunman like Wilson
doin' around here pal-in' around with Ryker?"
When they return home tired from the day's celebration
in the moonlight, Morgan Ryker is inside the front gate to the Starrett's
farm ("I'll open the gate for ya"). Mounted on horses inside
their property line, Ryker (with Wilson) attempts one final conciliatory
and reasonable gesture. He cordially greets them ("Howdy Starrett.
Ev'nin' ma'am") and offers to hire Joe on at top wages. Ryker
supports the rancher's point of view, sitting astride his horse,
and bargains to buy out the Starrett homestead:
You can run your cattle with mine. What's more,
I'll buy your homestead. Set a price you think is reasonable and
you'll find me reasonable. Is that fair?
Joe is provoked to anger: "You've made things
pretty hard for us, Ryker, and us in the right all the time." In
the background, Shane and Wilson quietly stare at each other, and
size each other up during the entire scene.
Ryker then eloquently argues how the ranchers discovered
the land, opened the West at great sacrifice, survived hard times,
fought Indians and rustlers, won the land and tamed the valley with
sweat and bloodshed:
Ryker: Right? You in the right! Look, Starrett. When
I come to this country, you weren't much older than your boy there.
And we had rough times, me and other men that are mostly dead now.
I got a bad shoulder yet from a Cheyenne arrowhead. We made this
country. Found it and we made it, with blood and empty bellies.
The cattle we brought in were hazed off by Indians and rustlers.
They don't bother you much anymore because we handled 'em.
We made a safe range out of this. Some of us died doin' it. We
made it. And then people move in who've never had to rawhide it
through the old days. They fence off my range, and fence me off
from water. Some of 'em like you plow ditches, take out irrigation
water. And so the creek runs dry sometimes. I've got to move my
stock because of it. And you say we have no right to the range.
The men that did the work and ran the risks have no rights? I take
you for a fair man, Starrett.
Joe: I'm not belittlin' what you and the others did. At the same
time, you didn't find this country. There was trappers here and Indian
traders long before you showed up and they tamed this country more
than you did.
Ryker: They weren't ranchers.
Joe: You talk about rights. You think you've got the right to say
that nobody else has got any. Well, that ain't the way the government
looks at it.
Ryker: I didn't come to argue. I made you a fair proposition.
Dismounting, Ryker appeals to Joe's young boy: "How
do you feel about it, son? Wouldn't you like to go partners with
me? I don't want trouble with your father. We don't want anyone to
get hurt." Starrett refuses Ryker's offer of partnership, and
dismisses the offer to his son: "Joey ain't quite of age, Ryker." The
stoic farmer believes that the homesteaders have the law, the government
and culture behind them. Ryker hurriedly leaves, with a final word:
"I don't want you to be sorry, Starrett. I'll see you." With
an evil smile, Wilson backs his horse out of the yard.
The next scene is in town the next day, where Ryker
vows that he may need to kill Starrett, although he is reminded that
the deed would be accomplished by Wilson: "You mean I'll kill
him if you'll have to." The Rykers consider baiting and luring
Starrett into thoughtlessly coming to town so as to provoke him,
easily confront him and murder him. During the dark, storm-clouded,
thunder-rumbling day, an opportunity to "get on with it" presents
itself with arrival of their first mindless victim (Torrey), as Wilson
reasons: "Why
don't we just gun him and get on with it. One's run already. It won't
take much to stampede the rest."
Although Ryker gives permission, he reminds Wilson of his own narrow
code of law: "We got to make this look right to Grafton."
Riding into town, "Stonewall" Torrey is accompanied
by Swedish homesteader Shipstead (Douglas Spencer) who has an errand
to perform at the blacksmith's shop. Thunderclouds again signal an
ominous happening. Hanging out on the boardwalk of Grafton's porch
above the muddy street, Wilson challenges, provokes, and taunts the
proud, hot-headed ex-Confederate Torrey who is determined not to
be pushed around. Torrey must slog through ankle-deep mud in the
town's street to get to the raised wooden porch to answer Wilson:
Wilson: (to Torrey) Hey! Come here!
Shipstead: Torrey, I wouldn't go over there, Torrey.
Torrey: Nobody's gonna buffalo me. (To Wilson) What can I do for
ya?
Wilson: And where do you think you're goin'?
Torrey: To get a whiskey.
Shipstead: Torrey. Torrey. (Thunderclaps sound) Torrey. (Wilson towers
above Torrey on the boardwalk as he walks along next to Torrey in
the mud and prevents him from stepping up)
Wilson: They tell me they call you 'Stonewall'.
Torrey: Anything wrong with that?
Wilson: That's just funny. I guess they named a lot of that Southern
trash after old Stonewall.
Torrey: (taunting) What'd they name you after, or would you know?
Wilson: (while casually putting a black glove on his shooting hand)
I'm sayin' that Stonewall Jackson was trash himself. Him, Lee and
all the rest of them Rebs. You too.
Tottering in the mud below Wilson, the diminutive Torrey
retaliates angrily, standing up to the evil, cold-blooded mercenary: "You're
a low-down lyin' Yankee." Wilson challenges him with the enticement:
Prove it!...
Torrey is tricked into drawing on the deadly gunfighter
before being brutally gunned down in the one-sided gunfight. Torrey
half-draws his weapon but is beaten and senses death - Wilson pauses
after outdrawing him, and then pulls the trigger with a deafening
gunblast. [Wilson enjoys killing people in cold blood, by choosing
easy targets for legal murder, and luring them in.] In a powerful
death scene, Torrey is propelled and jerked backwards and his back
slams into the thick mud. A cowhand adds his footnote comment: "One
less sodbuster."
After witnessing the tragedy, Torrey's horrified partner Shipstead
is warned by Morgan Ryker:
Get him out of here. Then you can go back and tell
your friends we'll be waitin' right here for any more of them that
comes in lookin' for trouble.
Shipstead drags Torrey's body out of the mud and slings
his corpse on a horse to be carried back to the homesteaders. He
informs Starrett: "The new man that works for Ryker did it." As
predicted, Starrett is intent on going to town alone, but Marion
and Shane warn him of his shortsightedness: "Don't you go alone." The
Lewis family prepares to leave, fearing more bloodshed, even before
Torrey's funeral: "We're goin' on. I've had enough." But
they are convinced to linger long enough to see "Stonewall get
a Christian burial." |