Why “The Man of the Lost Valleys” is a pioneering western that has become cult

A veteran of the Second World War, George Stevens infused his 1953 western with a melancholy and a sense of difference that will go down in history.

CIt was the greatest public success of the western in the 1950s. The Man of the Lost Valleys offers us a hackneyed scenario – a lonely cowboy comes to the aid of a family of farmers harassed by a large landowner – but with more lyricism, complexity and eccentricity. George Stevens, at the height of his glory (between his two Oscars for A place in the sun et Giant), films from the point of view of the farmers’ child, Joey, captivated by Shane, the redemptive gunslinger, like millions of kids at the time. But this choice allows us to evacuate all rationality in favor of emotion, fantasy and mythology. We are closer to The Night of the Hunter and Moonfleet Smugglers what of The Prisoner of the Desert.

Amplified sounds

However, Stevens insists on seriousness, even realism. Having filmed the liberation of the Dachau camp alongside American troops, he is both revulsed by the romanticism of violence and obsessed by the sacrifice made by the liberating hero, whether GI or cowboy. Shane is a fine triggerman who wears his exploits like a cross. Contrary to what Joey sees, the use of force devastates him. In The Man of the Lost Valleyswe fire very little, but each pistol shot has a devastating impact, especially since Stevens innovates by amplifying these noises: a technician shoots into a metal trash can and records the reverberations! And when an unfortunate man, hit by a Colt 45 bullet, collapses in front of a saloon, he is violently thrown back using a harness, another first in the technical field. Stevens also breaks the Hollywood rule that the gunshot and its victim never appear in the same shot.

Light effects

The director spent a year scouting in Wyoming and “auditioning” 1,500 horses before finding the right mount for Shane. The sets are muddy, but the Technicolor is dreamlike, the costumes threadbare and the livestock starving, but Stevens retains very spectacular variations in brightness in several of his shots, rarely tolerated by the cinematographers. The pace is contemplative, but the shots are often very brief, in total contradiction with the western genre. As for Shane, with his light suede clothes and his sparkling belt, he looks like a toy. When he teaches Joey to shoot, more than a hundred takes and seven days of filming are necessary (as for location scouting, a year will be devoted to editing, then re-editing the film). Stevens finally imposes his favorite actress, Jean Arthur, a fifty-year-old ten years older than Alan Ladd, who plays Shane. Her character as an American matriarch falls in love with her and her husband (played by an also younger Van Heflin) naturally accepts her.

For all its audacity (at the time), this “sur-western” (a pejorative term designating the attempt to intellectualize the genre) remained unique. Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood owe him a lot. Just like Martin Scorsese (the replica of Taxi Driver, “Are you talking to me?” I don’t see anyone else here! », first appears in this film), James Cameron (with his protective cyborg in Terminator II) and the melancholy superheroes of today. In Logan, Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) watches The Man of the Lost Valleys on TV with Wolverine’s daughter.

q Monday December 16 at 8:50 p.m. on Arte and Arte.tv.