WATCHING MOVIES WITH WOODY ALLEN

Coming Back to 'Shane'
By Rick Lyman

This article is the 13th in a series of discussions with noted directors, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers and others in the film industry. In each article, a filmmaker selects and discusses a movie that has personal meaning.
He came into his screening room walking that Woody Allen walk, slightly hunched, a little distracted, his vigorous fingers carving the air as he spoke. "I hope you don't mind," he said, "but I have prepared a statement."
And he pulled from his pocket a folded sheet of canary-colored paper, the double-spaced letters overlaid with black-ink editing that spilled into the margins. Mr. Allen said he wanted to make completely clear why he had chosen George Stevens's "Shane" as the film he wanted to watch.
"I'll just read this into your tape recorder, if that's O.K., and then you can do whatever you want with it after that," he said, settling himself in a plush chair in the back corner of the screening room. "Is it on? Can I start talking?"
He held up the canary sheet and began. "When I was invited to pick a film to view and discuss with The New York Times, I wanted to select an American one," Mr. Allen said. "This is unusual for me, because my affection for foreign movies seems to be much deeper. If I were, for example, to list my 10 or even 15 favorite movies - and I don't say best movies, because these lists are always completely subjective - aside from `Citizen Kane,' all of the films would be foreign. A sampling might be, `Rashomon,' `The Bicycle Thief,' `Grand Illusion,' `Wild Strawberries,' `Seventh Seal,' `Throne of Blood,' `The 400 Blows,' `Los Olvidados,' you get the idea."
He cleared his throat, took a deep breath and continued: "But I didn't want to do that for this, because I wanted to make sure that the people who read this, at least a portion of them, have seen the movie, so I thought I would stay with an American movie. I hesitated, too, about viewing a comedy, because on a list I might make of, let's say, the 10 or 15 great American films, there'd be almost no comedies. Certainly not from the talking era. And I wouldn't include the silent era, because that is a completely different entity. Silent films to me are a completely different kind of thing. If you were to count silent films, of course, between Chaplin and Keaton you could probably get 10 great movies. But if you take films only from the start of the sound era, I don't think that there are too many great sound comedies." Mr. Allen, 65, hunched forward and spoke slowly into the recorder, never looking up from the typewritten sheet. (And it had indeed been pecked out on a typewriter, not printed from a computer.)
He wore khaki pants and a button- down blue shirt, long-sleeved and fastened at the wrist, and despite the sweltering summer afternoon he was perfectly dry, pressed and unruffled.
"I have a very idiosyncratic view of sound comedies that I wouldn't want to interfere with this," he said. "For example, I wouldn't count the Marx brothers or W. C. Fields films, I wouldn't put them on my great list, as I don't consider their films great. But they are records of performances by these stupendous comedians, and any five minutes of Groucho or Fields is funnier than most purported or even venerated comedies. And still I wouldn't rank their movies, which I find, you know, choppy and even silly, as great comic filmmaking. I would say my personal view of most sound era comedies would be considered harsh, and I certainly include my own films in that appraisal. None of them would be on any of these great lists, certainly."

'A Great Movie'
There is a scene in Mr. Allen's "Manhattan" in which Isaac, the character he plays in the 1979 film, reclines on a sofa in his New York apartment and recites into a tape recorder a list of what he holds most dear in the world, from city landmarks to creative works like Flaubert's "Sentimental Education." It is difficult to watch Mr. Allen read his "Shane" statement into a similar tape recorder without catching at least an echo of Isaac's streaming, punctilious manifesto.
"For whatever reason, I am not enchanted by a huge number of highly respected comedies, whose names I would rather not mention and hurt anybody's feelings," Mr. Allen said. "I do consider `The Shop Around the Corner' a great comic movie, also `Trouble in Paradise,' also `Born Yesterday.' Speaking of `Born Yesterday,' I considered the British version of `Pygmalion' with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, and also the Fellini masterpiece `The White Sheik.' Since I spent most of my life in comedy, in one medium or another, I am not a clean, objective judge. I would prefer not to harp on my highly special preferences and distastes. As musical comedy goes, I do consider `Singin' in the Rain,' `Meet Me in St. Louis' and `Gigi' great, and probably `My Fair Lady' would have to be ranked up there.
"In the end, looking over my list of great American films, which include, among others, for final consideration, `The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,' `White Heat,' `Double Indemnity,' `The Informer' and `The Hill' by Sidney Lumet, I finally settled on `Shane.' This is an odd choice in one sense, because I don't like westerns. I like `The Ox-Bow Incident' and `High Noon' and care a bit but considerably less about a few others, but `Shane,' I think, is a great movie and can hold its own with any film, whether it's a western or not."
Mr. Allen looked up from the piece of paper. "That's the only statement I wanted to make," he said, handing over the typewritten sheet along with the still turning recorder. His editing marks cover the entire statement, words are crossed out, entire clauses inserted from the margins.
He nervously cleared his throat again and stood up, peering back into the projection booth where someone was waiting to crank up the first reel of "Shane." The cluttered suite of Park Avenue offices where Mr. Allen edits his films and maintains a screening room is completely free of the kind of blinking high-tech gizmos with which other directors surround themselves. The editing equipment, the upholstered furniture, even the copious collection of vinyl jazz albums that line one entire wall all seem like throwbacks to an earlier, analog era, as well worn as the love seat where Mr. Allen finally came to rest facing the screen.
"I saw 'Shane' when it first came out in theaters," Mr. Allen said. That would have been in 1953, when he was just getting out of high school in Brooklyn. "I didn't rush off to see it," he said, "because there's no western film that I ever rush off to see. I'm not really that interested - and, again, this is purely personal - by rural atmospheres. So when a film begins in a farmhouse or something, it's not the same for me as if it begins in a penthouse. I just like an urban setting."
So just why, then, did he choose "Shane"?
"I thought `The Ox-Bow Incident' was wonderful when I saw it, and `High Noon' is a good western, for me," he said. "But none of them hold a candle to `Shane.' `Shane' is in a class by itself, because if I was making a list of the best American movies, `Shane' would be on it, and none of these other movies would."
The reason, in large part, is the great skill of Stevens, Mr. Allen said. "I rank him very high. And this is on the basis of a very few things, really. The few of his films that I've liked, I've liked very much. `Shane,' I think, is his masterpiece. I do think he would be right up there with my very few favorite American directors - of the era that I grew up in. Orson Welles is in a class by himself, but then, you know, John Huston and George Stevens and William Wyler."

A Score of Viewings
Mr. Allen remembered enjoying "Shane" from the first time he saw it, but he said his appreciation had deepened over the years. "I've seen it many, many times," he said. "Certainly more than 20. I've also taken people to see it, people who tell me that they can't stand westerns. Because it's more than a western. It's a fine movie. Oh, there are a couple of weaker spots in it, but they are so minor and forgivable, and what's great about it is so wonderful, that you'd really have to be carping to be annoyed at them. To this day, if it was on television this week and I happened to be tuning through the channels, I would stop and see it. I am always riveted."
Mr. Allen frequently describes "Shane" as a lovely film, or a beautiful one, and praises it for its poetry and elegant flow, words not normally associated with westerns. Two of his favorite westerns, it is pointed out, are essentially a long buildup to a climactic confrontation. In "Shane" it is Alan Ladd's reluctant gunfighter strapping his six-shooter back on to do battle for the beleaguered homesteaders; in "High Noon" it is Gary Cooper taking on the killer who has arrived on the noon train.
"Yes," Mr. Allen said, letting the notion sink in for a moment. "But if you were asking me, I would say that `Shane' achieves a certain poetry that `High Noon' doesn't. `High Noon' is beautifully made, but you can see the message of it too plainly, you know, and it's just not as well done. For whatever reason, probably because Stevens himself had some of the poet in him, it infuses that material with a certain poetry that `High Noon' doesn't have. `High Noon' is more like a fine piece of work, you know, whereas `Shane' is sort of a fine piece of poetry."'
Mr. Allen leaned over, twisted the volume knob on a console beside his seat and shouted back to the man in the projection booth. The familiar blast of Victor Young's classic score erupts behind the Paramount Pictures logo, pushing into the classic opening shot of the wandering gunfighter cresting a hill and passing down into the troubled valley where the drama will take place.
The colors in the print are a little bled out, which is a shame, because the images of the craggy peaks of northwest Wyoming, where Stevens shot the film, are among the most beautiful in any western. Did Mr. Allen have any idea where the film was shot? "No idea," he said in a crisp tone that discouraged further discussion. A subsequent question was cut off just as quickly. Was Mr. Allen going to be able to discuss the film as we watched it? "I can't talk and watch the movie at the same time," he said.
Oh.
This was a bit of a problem, as the discussion is pretty much the idea of this series. But he was adamant - polite but adamant. He suggested a compromise: we would watch the film for 20 minutes or so, then switch it off and discuss what we had seen before starting it up again.

Just Heading North
Shane glides across the bucolic valley to the remote homestead of the Starrett family, Joe (Van Heflin), Marian (Jean Arthur) and Joey (Brandon de Wilde). He asks to cut through their property, says he's just heading north to "someplace I've never been." When Little Joey absent-mindedly cocks his rifle, Shane snaps around like a gunfighter. When some rough- looking men ride up, Starrett at first thinks Shane is one of them. They are the Ryker brothers and their gang, open-range cattlemen who want to chase off all homesteaders. They threaten Starrett and roar off.
By this time, an embarrassed Starrett realizes that Shane was not with them and invites him to stay for supper. Shane, used to the gunfighter's violent life, is entranced by the gentle domestic scene. After dinner, the two men work to remove a stubborn tree stump in Starrett's yard, and Shane accepts a job on the ranch.
The next day, Shane rides into the nearby town to buy work clothes and is humiliated by one of Ryker's hired men, played by Ben Johnson. At a meeting that night, Stonewall Torrey (Elisha Cook Jr.), one of the homesteaders, and others shun Shane for his supposed cowardice. They decide to ride into town together in the future, and are seen doing just that, a glowering sky lighted by lightning foreshadowing trouble ahead.
"O.K., is this a good place to stop?" Mr. Allen asked. "It is? Fine." He called back to the projectionist.

In the Middle of Nowhere
"I think, first off, you take the film from the beginning, there's that beautiful scenic opening," Mr. Allen said. "The sense of this ranch house that's isolated out there, and then the town, which is one of the great images in American film. It's a town in the middle of nowhere, just a few buildings. I mean, it's just a little general store, a bar, a livery stable, just stuck out in the middle of the wild like that. You have a sense that this is what those Western towns really looked like."
Mr. Allen noted the complex tangle of relationships that are economically sketched out, one by one, in the opening scenes. "From the first, because of the way Stevens shot it, you can tell that there is this intense fascination between the kid and Shane; it's almost love at first sight or something," he said. "And it's wonderful the way he snaps around when the kid cocks his gun, because you know, immediately, that you're dealing with a tough guy. It's done so offhandedly. There are certain things that you don't think in words, that you think emotionally. You know, it clicks in some subliminal way. Here, you think to yourself, oh, I would like to have this guy on my side. So that then later, when he does go on Starrett's side, it's so wish- fulfilling.
"And the bad guys are handled in a great way, too. The first word out of Ryker's mouth is that he doesn't want any trouble. At several points during the movie, Ryker tries to be reasonable. So it's not just a bunch of bullies. It's more complex than that."
The connecting threads of the relationships are built one strand at a time. Even the tough guy who humiliates Shane in the bar comes back into play, later, redeemed and nuanced. But through it all, the overriding mystery is the character of Shane himself; quiet, calm, utterly competent and yet yearning for something. "This guy is not a pushover," Mr. Allen said, "but you have also seen this goodness of spirit that he has. Alan Ladd is an interesting choice for the part because Shane is such a passive character in the whole thing. He's just quiet and passive and nonassertive. And he's a small guy, not a big, beefy cowboy star."

Evil Arrives in the Town
The movie starts up again. Shane and the homesteaders are heading into town. The weather is glowering. Shane, now aware that the homesteaders consider him a coward, wanders back into the bar to confront Ben Johnson. They circle each other, then fight. At first, the homesteaders hang back, fearful. But finally Starrett wades in and the two men take on the entire gang. The Ryker brothers, sensing that the time has come to raise the stakes, send off for a gunfighter. Shortly afterward, Jack Wilson (Jack Palance) rides into town, a reptilian, thoroughly malevolent desperado.
"Watch this," Mr. Allen said, breaking his own rule.
Mr. Palance enters the saloon. A dog looks up, sees him and slinks across the barroom floor. Mr. Palance begins to walk across the room. We see him only from the waist down. Gradually, he dissolves out of the frame and, almost instantly, dissolves back in a few steps further along. It's beautiful, but ghostly. He's like an apparition.
"It's one of the most puzzling dissolves I've ever seen," Mr. Allen said. "I can't imagine what it was for. It must have been to cover up a mistake. I can't think of any other reason for it."
Once Mr. Palance is introduced, the film returns to the farm. Shane is trying to teach Joey how to shoot until Marian comes out and stops it. She doesn't want her boy to have anything to do with guns. It's clear, too, that the unspoken relationship between Marian and Shane is deepening, though nothing ever happens between them that's more physical than a handshake.
"So, when we last left off, they were riding into town, and you could tell that Shane had his own agenda to settle the score with these people," Mr. Allen said. "And then they go home and you get the scene of Marian fixing up the two men, Shane and her husband, and it's so obvious that she's attracted to Shane, and it's starting to bother her. When Shane leaves, she asks her husband to hold her. She's getting to where she can't trust her feelings. This is wonderful stuff for a cowboy movie because it's not heavy-handed. It's a relationship that develops with the same subtlety that it would in the most sophisticated kind of urban movie."
And then there is Jack Palance.
"If any actor has ever created a character who is the personification of evil, it is Jack Palance," Mr. Allen said. "We've all read about the size of the horse, how Stevens put Palance on a smaller horse so he'd look even bigger. But when he arrives - the music is great - he's all in black; he's so poetically evil. He looks like he'd gladly kill the guys who hired him if they looked at him wrong. He's just bad news. Serpentine. In our minds, he's set off against Shane, one particularly good, almost too good to be true, and the other is totally evil."
By this point, too, we have come to know Starrett a little better.
"Shane is more sophisticated," Mr. Allen said. "Shane has traveled more. He's drifted around more, seen more different sides of the world. Starrett is more plain. But they're both very nice men, both brave men. The only difference is that Shane is so amazing with a gun. He's got the gift of God or the artist or something."
The homesteaders, hoping to buck up their confidence, organize a Fourth of July celebration. Starrett notices Shane dancing with Marian, and an odd look crosses his face. After the party, Shane and the Starretts head back to their homestead. It's dark. When they arrive, the Ryker brothers are waiting for them. So is Wilson.

'One of the Best'
"This is a great scene," Mr. Allen said. "Really, from here on until the end of the picture are some of the best scenes I've ever seen in an American movie. And this is one of the best. You have so much going on at the same time, but it's never forced. All these relationships are working at the same time, and Stevens is able to make you feel and understand all of it because he has laid the groundwork so carefully in the earlier scenes. You've got the Rykers, talking reasonable again. You've got the wife worrying about her husband, about their boy. You've got the boy watching this. And then, in the background, without a word, really, you've got Shane and Wilson sizing each other up. And the boy watches this, too. It's directed in the most brilliant way. And when, at the end, Jack Palance backs his horse out of the yard, it's just an amazingly wonderful moment."
The next day, Torrey, the hot-headed homesteader, heads into town. It's too much of a temptation for Wilson. With the Rykers' permission, he picks a fight with Torrey. Standing on the raised wooden sidewalk outside the saloon, looking down at the diminutive Torrey slogging through the mud, Wilson belittles him with a hissing voice, casually puts on his gunfighter's gloves and outdraws Torrey. There is a moment's pause, Torrey standing there with his useless gun in his hand, until Wilson blasts him in cold blood.
"This may be the best shooting confrontation scene in a cowboy movie ever," Mr. Allen said. "First, it's so beautifully filmed, these guys riding into town, the camera going along with them, and then you get the side view of the town with the mountains and the weather. And then Palance, the personification of evil, lures him into this fight. It unfolds so slowly. And then there's the ritual of it, with Palance putting on that glove. It's just his eccentricity, or something, a part of his artistic process, in a sense. It isn't a simple thing, where he just shoots Torrey. There's this whole ritual that goes with it. And it's always so shocking when you get this three- or four-second pause before Palance pulls the trigger, because it's clear that he doesn't have to shoot. He's already beaten him. There's never been a shootout in a cowboy movie to equal it, in terms of evil against innocence."

Violence vs. Violence
Torrey is buried at the graveyard on a hill overlooking the town. Some of these shots are the most stunning in the film: the small cluster of mourners around the open grave, the tiny town in the distance, the towering mountains all around. That night, back at the homestead, the Rykers pass word that they want to meet with Starrett back in town. He knows it's probably a trap, but he also knows he has to go. His chances are slim, but he has come to realize that the Rykers' increasing violence can be defeated only by more violence.
Shane appears. He has his gunfighter's clothes on again, his six-shooters strapped on his waist. He announces that he, not Starrett, is going into town. They quarrel, then fight, tumbling all over the dusty yard until, up against the remains of the stump over which they labored in the opening scenes, Shane knocks Starrett unconscious, says goodbye to Marian, suffers Joey's withering disdain and heads into town.
"Shane doesn't want to get back into gunfighting," Mr. Allen said. "He's been trying the whole movie to put it behind him. But he knows that the only way to put an end to the violence in the valley is for him to do it. That's what makes the film great in my eyes. He knows. He's got to go in there and kill them. And sometimes in life - it's such an ugly truth - there is no other way out of a situation but you've got to go in there and kill them. Very few of us are brave enough or have the talent to do it. The world is full of evil, and rationalized evil and evil out of ignorance, and there are times when that evil reaches the level of pure evil, like Jack Palance, and there is no other solution but to go in there and kill them."

He's Not Coming Back
And so the famous climax plays out. Shane makes his long ride into town, Joey running after him. Shane confronts Wilson, pure good versus pure evil, and outdraws him. Then, when the Ryker brothers pull guns on him, Shane shoots them, too, but not before one of them wounds him.
Afterward, Shane gets on his horse and tells Joey that he's not coming back to the ranch. Shane realizes that the era of the gunfighter is ending, but he also knows that he can't be anything else. And so he rides off. "Come back!" Joey calls. But Shane does not come back. The last shot, a mirror of the opening image, has Shane riding over the crest of a hill. Except this time he is heading out of the valley. And it is twilight. And he is hunched over in the saddle. Wounded? Dead? Or simply sorrowful?
"I don't like to think that he's dead," Mr. Allen said. "Just that he's wounded. I hate to think that he dies in the end. I think they probably are pointing to the fact that he's dying because, you know, he's ascending. But I don't like to think that he's dead yet."
And Mr. Allen stood, stretched, turning the lights on one by one.
"Everything pays off," he said. "The relationship between Shane and the kid pays off in spades. But also between Shane and Marian, between the husband and wife. And when Alan Ladd takes control and tells Starrett that he's not letting him go into town, it's like, you know, you always hope in life that there's somebody who will take that kind of control, who will fight your battles. It's really only in the movies that it happens, though. The moment you really want to see, and that you can never see, is the next morning when the people come into town and see that both Ryker brothers and Wilson are dead. You don't get to see that. And you want to. You want to see how they react when they see what Shane has done for them.
"Because the truth is, most people are not comfortable with violence. So they find themselves at the mercy of armies or groups of policemen or vigilantes. You always hope, in that situation, that either a Shane will appear or that you will somehow become like Shane. I use the example of Michael Jordan. He's the guy who knows that the ballgame has to be won in the last six seconds, so he goes out there and quietly wins it. That's what had to happen here. I keep referring to Shane as the artist. You see, that's what he is. Shane is the guy who has brought this gunfighting to the level of art."

What's a Western Doing Here?
Highlights of Woody Allen's directing career and information on "Shane." Mr. Allen has also acted in films by other directors, notably "Play It Again, Sam" (1972), directed by Herbert Ross from Mr. Allen's screenplay.

What They Watched
"SHANE." Directed and produced by George Stevens. Screenplay by A. B. Guthrie Jr. With Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon de Wilde, Jack Palance, Ben Johnson and Elisha Cook Jr. 1953. Paramount. 118 minutes.