ABSTRACT
In the closing seconds of George Stevens’s magisterial Western Shane (1953), after a violent barroom showdown that leaves a hired gun from Cheyenne dead, young Joey beseeches the titular hero not to leave his parents’ homestead. The plaintive words of the teary-eyed boy—“Come back!”—echo through the valley below the Teton Mountains, which Shane ascends on horseback to the accompaniment of composer Victor Young’s swelling score. Although those memorable words continue to reverberate among many American fans of the Western genre, who similarly desire the hero’s return, Korean movie audiences of the postwar period had only to wait fifteen years before a localized version of this timeless story appeared on the big screen.
