Shane (1953)
Shane (1953), for which he won his second Oscar, reflected Stevens’ fascination with the West. Warren Beatty observed that Stevens had defied all sound conventions in his brilliant handling of gun shots. Alan Ladd spoke of Shane as Stevens’ telling an American tale in the King Arthur tradition. Stevens described it as ‘a real put down of the gunfighter as hero. A gun is a destructive, violent instrument. Giant (1956) third in his American trilogy, focused on “the need to get acknowledged for all the trouble you have experienced for so many years.”
Stevens was moved by the fact that Anne Frank’s ideas (“I still believe in spite of everything that people really are good at heart”) survived in history. With his typical meticulousness, he had Otto Frank show him the Frank refuge from the Nazis and visited Dachau and Israel before shooting commenced on The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). Stevens’ intensity was all-encompassing. As Millie Perkins, who played Anne Frank, described it “He gave me everything—the sound, the atmosphere.”
