My great friend Shane

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Movie
German title My great friend Shane
Original title Shane
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1953
length 118 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director George Stevens
script AB Guthrie Junior
production Ivan Moffat ,
George Stevens for
Paramount Pictures
music Victor Young
camera Loyal Griggs
cut William Hornbeck
Tom McAdoo
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Shane

My great friend Shane (original title: Shane ) is an American western directed by George Stevens from 1953. It is based on the novel of the same name by Jack Schaefer .

action

Wyoming in the late 19th century: One day a mysterious stranger arrives at Joe Starrett's small farm. Everything indicates that this man, who calls himself Shane, is a gunslinger who is on the run from persecutors who want to compete with him. However, Starrett never asks Shane where he comes from and offers to stay on his farm and work for him. Shane accepts. Starrett's son, eight-year-old Joey, admires the stranger for his strength and skill with the weapon. Shane, on the other hand, is drawn to Starrett's wife, Marian, who apparently feels the same way about him.

Starrett and his neighbors are in a bitter feud with the landowner Rufus Ryker, who claims the entire area of ​​the area and wants to drive out all the small farmers. In this conflict, Shane takes the side of the farmers, but tries to avoid arguments, which initially earned him the reputation of being a coward. When Shane defends himself with a fight against the taunts of Ryker's employee Calloway and he wins the bar fight with Starrett's help, the situation escalates decisively: Ryker hires the sniper Jack Slick Wilson from Cheyenne , who is now supposed to drive the farmers out by force. Wilson deliberately provokes one of the farmers, the hot-blooded ex-soldier Torrey, to a shooting duel, which turns out fatal for Torrey. Then the other farmers fearfully want to give up their land, but Starrett and Shane convince them to stay for the time being.

Starrett is invited by Ryker for a conversation, to which he wants to leave alone. Calloway, who has since left Ryker's farm, warns Shane that Starrett is about to be lured into a trap. Shane must knock Starrett down after a lengthy duel to protect him from a confrontation with Ryker and Wilson in which he would have no chance.

Shane says goodbye to Starrett's wife, who understands his motivations, and rides into town. Joey runs after him without him noticing. In the showdown in the saloon, Shane can shoot Wilson and Ryker, but when he tries to leave the saloon, he is ambushed and injured by Ryker's brother Morgan. Shane can only avoid the deadly bullet because he is warned by Joey and kills Ryker's brother as well. Shane never returns to Starrett's farm. He says goodbye to Joey, leaves the valley and rides wounded into the distance. Whether Shane was fatally wounded, as is often speculated, is neither from the film nor from Schaefer's novel.

background

AB Guthrie's screenplay was based on the 1948 novel Shane by Jack Schaefer, whose plot is based in part on the Johnson County War . In the Wyominger Johnson County War between 1889 and 1892, large landowners tried brutal methods to evict the newly arrived settlers. At least 25 people were killed in the subsequent conflicts, and the dispute served as the material for many myths and as inspiration for other western films such as Heaven's Gate (1980) by Michael Cimino .

Shane was originally intended to be played by Montgomery Clift . William Holden and Katharine Hepburn were in discussion for the roles of Joe Starrett and Marian Starrett . When all three had to cancel, George Stevens requested a list of all available actors who were under contract with Paramount Pictures at the time and within a few minutes selected Alan Ladd , Van Heflin and Jean Arthur to star. Arthur had already largely withdrawn from Hollywood a few years earlier, but was persuaded by Stevens - with whom she had previously made two films - to make her final theatrical appearance.

The shooting of the film lasted from July to October 1951. The production costs were over three million dollars, which was a large film budget at the time. For fear of failure, Paramount thought at times about selling the production to another studio. My great friend Shane was one of the first films that tried to make the sound of a gun fired as realistic as possible. In addition, the actors were tied to wires and pulled back as soon as they were hit by a bullet. Warren Beatty referred to My Great Friend Shane in the documentary George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey as an inspiration for his own work Bonnie & Clyde in this regard .

Although filming was completed in late 1951, the film did not premiere in New York until April 23, 1953. This was mainly due to the long period of time that George Stevens for the section needed. My great friend Shane was a huge hit with audiences, grossing $ 20 million in the United States alone. The film was released in Germany on October 23, 1953.

synchronization

The German dubbing was created in 1953 based on a dialogue book by Fritz A. Koeniger and directed by Volker Becker .

role actor German Dubbing voice
Shane Alan Ladd Ernst Wilhelm Borchert
Marian Starrett Jean Arthur Marianne Kehlau
Joe Starrett Van Heflin Fritz Tillmann
Joey Starrett Brandon De Wilde Michael fee
Jack Wilson Jack Palance Ralph Lothar
Chris Calloway Ben Johnson Friedrich Joloff
Rufus Ryker Emile Meyer Walther Suessenguth
Frank Torrey Elisha Cook Jr. Herbert Stass
Axel Shipstead Douglas Spencer Alfred Balthoff
Ernie Wright Leonard Strong Robert Klupp

influence

My great friend Shane is considered a classic in American cinema and is now considered a cult film . He had a major impact on the western genre and has been quoted and parodied in numerous other works. For example, Robert De Niro's famous monologue “You talkin 'to me” in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is based on a scene from the film. In the 1960s television series Batman , there was a villain named Shame who was also optically modeled after this. Also in the episode Life in the Holosuite (season 7, episode 10) of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine an excerpt from My Great Friend Shane can be seen. The last words of the film achieved particular fame: “Shane. Come back! "

In 1966 a television series of the same name was produced in which David Carradine and Jill Ireland played the leading roles. Clint Eastwood made a remake of the material in 1985 under the title Pale Rider .

The influence of this film reaches into the comic strip culture: The villain Phil Steel in the Lucky Luke band Lucky Luke against Phil Steel (in the French original: Lucky Luke et Phil Defer ) is based on the character of the killer Wilson.

Reviews

“The brilliantly staged and excellently played Edelwestern dispenses almost entirely with spectacular action elements and instead relies on a sedate staging and excellent camera work (Oscar for Loyal Griggs). Shane embodies the archetype of the lonely and homeless gunslinger who, as 'savior in the saddle', selflessly sacrifices himself for the weak and oppressed and thus helps the good to triumph over evil. "

- Lexicon of international film

“He comes on a white horse, is brightly dressed, is friendly, helpful and smart. He is a prince charming who was transplanted into the harsh reality of the American West. This angel, who has descended on earth, seems to embody the legend of the West, this American fairy tale, almost in its purest form. A legend is told here that can be recognized as such at any time. "

- Michael Hanisch , 1984

“In addition to Alan Ladd and Van Heflin, Jack Palance stands out as the incarnation of evil. He speaks just twelve sentences in the film [...]. "

- Volker Pruss and Jürgen Wiemers , 1995

"Alan Ladds Shane [...] [has to understand] that there is no place for him on the Starrets farm in the long term [...], not only conveying himself and thus also the viewer, but also the little Joey, who has him adored from the first moment and measuring the virtues of his hard- working but conflict- shy father more and more disparagingly against those of the gunslinger . This is a painful, never cheesy process of learning on both sides, and the unobtrusive, almost laconic way with which George Stevens demonstrates that true learning always happens the hard way is perhaps Shane's greatest quality , acknowledged also from people who are generally gripped by sheer horror when a film comes along with too transparent didactic intentions. "

- Ulrich von Berg , 2003

Awards

Soundtrack

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | My great friend Shane. Retrieved August 21, 2018 .
  2. ↑ My great friend Shane. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ Michael Hanisch: Western: The development of a film genre . Henschelverlag / Art and Society, Berlin 1984, p. 276.
  4. ↑ VP Volker Pruss, JW Jürgen Wiemers: My great friend Shane. In: Thomas Koebner with the assistance of Kerstin-Luise Neumann (Hrsg.): Film classics. Descriptions and comments (= RUB ). 4 Vols. Reclam, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-15-030011-8 , Vol. 2, pp. 169–171, here 171.
  5. ↑ Ulrich von Berg: My great friend Shane. In: Bernd Kiefer, Norbert Grob (ed.), Marcus Stiglegger (collaboration): Filmgenres. Western (= RUB . No. 18402). Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-018402-9 , pp. 166–170, here 168.
  6. ↑ Ulrich von Berg: My great friend Shane. In: Bernd Kiefer, Norbert Grob (ed.), Marcus Stiglegger (collaboration): Filmgenres. Western (= RUB . No. 18402). Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-018402-9 , pp. 166–170, here 169.