Shane (Paramount) is as high-styled a Technicolored horse opera as moviegoers are likely to see this year. It tells the familiar old western yarn about the good guy v. the badmen. The mysterious stranger named Shane (Alan Ladd) befriends a couple of turn-of-the-century Wyoming homesteaders (Van Heflin and Jean Arthur) and their nine-year-old son (Brandon de Wilde). Having helped the "sodbusters" fight off a group of villainous cattlemen who are trying to grab their land, Shane just as mysteriously rides off into the blue distance.
This conventional screenplay has been filmed in entirely unconventional...