A lone rider makes his way down wooded slopes into a beautiful sunlit valley. To swooning strings he steers his chestnut horse across the plain. A young blue-eyed boy with a rifle is stalking a deer that drinks at the stream. Both boy and deer look up as the rider approaches. The boy runs back to a log cabin where his mother sings as she prepares supper. Outside his father is chopping wood.

‘Somebody's comin', Pa!’
‘Well, let him come.’

The rider is white-hatted and golden haired, and wears a fringed buckskin jacket and an ornate gun belt. He is Shane (Alan Ladd), a drifter with a past he’s trying to forget.

Shane accepts the offer of the homesteader, Joe Starrett (Van Heflin), to help out around the farm. Soon he has tidied away his six-shooter, and swapped his buckskins for everyday shirt and trousers. But Shane finds himself caught up in a bitter land dispute between the local farmers and ranchers. Ruthless cattle baron Rufus Ryker has hired a gang of bearded ruffians to harass the humble homesteaders out of the valley, and the newcomer feels compelled to intervene.

Can brooding, enigmatic Shane escape his past? Will he return to his brutal life as a gunslinger? Is there any other way?

Shane: A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or 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.

Marian: We'd all be much better off if there wasn't a single gun left in this valley - including yours.

The splendid 1953 movie ‘Shane’ was directed by George Stevens. A number of factors set it apart from more run-of-the-mill Westerns.

First there is the glorious cinematography. The big blue skies and snow-capped Teton mountains just look stunning.

Then there are the tender relationships: between Shane and Starrett’s son Joey (Brandon De Wilde) who so admires the stranger; between Shane and Starrett, who respect each other despite their obvious differences; between Shane and Starrett’s wife Marian (Jean Arthur), who both recognise they cannot act on their instinctive attraction.

‘Joe, hold me. Don't say anything, just hold me – tight.’

There are also the brilliant set-pieces: the welcoming supper served up by Marian culminating in a generous portion of lattice-topped apple pie; young Joey’s wide-eyed look of amazement as Shane noisily demonstrates how to shoot a revolver; the cold-blooded killing of homesteader Torrey by a black-hatted, black-gloved gunman (Jack Pallance); Torrey’s funeral on Cemetery Hill - hats off, ‘Abide with Me’, children fidgeting and a dog whimpering over the coffin.

‘We can't give up this valley and we ain't gonna do it. This is farmin' country, a place where people can come and bring up their families. Who is Ruf Ryker or anyone else to run us away from our own homes? He only wants to grow his beef. And what we want to grow up is families, to grow 'em good and grow 'em up strong, the way they was meant to be grown.’

Finally there is the awareness that ‘Shane’ is a fiction located in historical events: the Wyoming range wars of the late 19th century. Most of the disputed territory had been settled by ranchers that herded their cattle freely on the open range. But the Homestead Acts of the 1860s brought an influx of small farmers who fenced off their properties, leading to competition for land and water. The ranchers accused the homesteaders of rustling and embarked on a campaign of intimidation.

In ‘Shane’ Starrett articulates the point of view of the homesteaders. He is the voice of change and progress.

'These old-timers, they just can't see it yet, but runnin' cattle on an open range just can't go on forever. It takes too much space for too little results. Those herds aren't any good, they're all horns and bone. Now cattle that is bred for meat and fenced in and fed right - that's the thing. You gotta pick your spot, get your land, your own land. Now a homesteader, he can't run but a few beef. But he can sure grow grain and cut hay. And then what with his garden and the hogs and milk, well, he'll make out all right.'

Although Ryker is clearly a villain, he is still given an opportunity to put the counter argument; to set out the ranchers’ case.

'Look, Starrett, when I come to this country, you weren't much older than your boy there. 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, but 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 plough ditches, take out irrigation water. And so the creek runs dry sometimes and 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?'

‘Shane’ is a memorable drama in part because the action occurs at the frontier of social change. The upheaval and unrest give the story extra resonance and meaning. This was a real human conflict.

'You talk about rights. You think you've got the right to say that nobody else has got any.'

It’s notable that a number of other great Westerns are similarly set around historical transition: ‘Red River’ (1948) relates the story of the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail; the dark events in ‘The Searchers’ (1956) are set in the aftermath of the Civil War; ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ (1962) marks the end of the Old West with the arrival of law and order, the railroad and statehood.

I would often advise young Planners embarking on a Pitch first to identify the cultural change that was impacting their sector – because where there is change, you’ll also find energy, interest and attention. If you can locate the brand at the vanguard of this change, characterising it as pioneer, as a vehicle to the future, then you’ll be set fair.

At the end of ‘Shane’ our hero is forced to pick up his six-shooter once more in order to defend the cause of the homesteaders. He realises he cannot escape his past or his destiny.

'A man has to be what he is, Joey. Can't break the mould. I tried it and it didn't work for me… Joey, there's no living with a killing. There's no going back from one. Right or wrong, it's a brand. A brand sticks. There's no going back.’

Shane rides off into the darkness. In tears young Joey shouts after him:

'Shane. Shane! Come back! Bye, Shane.’

'Tribal War,
We don't want no more of that.
I give Jah praises in the morning,
When I hear the people sing.
They start sittin' up and lickin' a puff.
One by one, they take a lickel sup,
Say that the war is over.
We now see ourselves in unity,
Celebratin' with better coli,
Now that the war is over.’
George Nooks, ‘Tribal War’ (Joe Gibbs)

No. 342