character development ahead of action whilst retaining most of the traditional aspects. For the most part, the psychological Western morphed into the revisionist Western as censorship restrictions were relaxed and removed in the 1960s. Shane (1953), directed by George Stevens, is a psychological Western. The title character (Alan Ladd) seems at first to be a traditional Western drifter riding across a traditional Western landscape but it is soon apparent that he has entered a complex setting which is populated by, as Kim Newman puts it, "believable characters with mixed motives". Even though rancher Riker (Emile Meyer) is ostensibly the villain of the piece, he makes the point that he has striven for thirty years to develop the cattle range which is now being taken over by fence-building "sodbusters", many of whom have the mixed motives noted by Newman. Despite the complexity of its characters, Shane is nevertheless filmed in a conventional setting and ends with the hero outshooting and killing the three main villains. There is, however, an element of revisionism in the ending when the disillusioned Shane admits to Riker that he knows his day as a gunfighter is over. Shane rides away to an uncertain future, possibly to die as he is wounded, and it is farmer Starrett (Van Heflin) and his family who endure. Shane is a psychological Western with many of the trappings of a traditional one. Fifteen years later, Sergio Leone directed Once Upon a Time in the West, a revisionist Western which completely subverts the traditional with complex characters and multiple plot devices, the key one being revenge – the motive of enigmatic gunfighter Harmonica (Charles Bronson). As in Shane, it is not the gunfighters who "inherit the West" but in this case the compassionate town-building ex-prostitute Jill (Claudia Cardinale). By the end of the film, all of the antagonists except Harmonica are dead and, like Shane, he rides away to an uncertain future. Development Opinion is divided on the origin of the revisionist or psychological Western but it is generally agreed that there were hints of a darker perspective in some films of the 1930s such as Westward Ho (1935), directed by Robert N. Bradbury and starring John Wayne, in which the hero leads a band of vigilantes on a quest for revenge. Westward Ho is the earliest film in AllMovie's list of revisionist Westerns. The earliest films classified by AllMovie as psychological