Shane (Blu-ray) Eureka

One of the landmark and most enduring Westerns of the 1950s, George Stevens’ Shane struck a chord with audiences at the time of its release, and continues to influence admirers today, even as it served as a template for the series of groundbreaking spaghetti-westerns of Sergio Leone.

Alan Ladd plays the titular gunslinger, the archetypal “man alone” who wanders into town and shortly afterward becomes embroiled in a conflict between a group of Wyoming homesteaders and the nefarious cattle baron who has designs to wrest away their land. As the conflict escalates, and a romance develops between Shane and homesteader Marian Starrett (Jean Arthur in her last screen role before an early retirement from motion pictures), a who’s-who of studio system character talent revolves through the production — Van Heflin, Jack Palance, Elisha Cook, Jr. — before the proverbial ride into the sunset…

Writing in The New York Times in 2001, Woody Allen said: “Shane, I think, is [Stevens’] masterpiece. I’ve seen it many, many times. Certainly more than 20.” The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present George Stevens’ Shane in this special edition, for the film’s first release on Blu-ray in the UK.