It’s a great film and one of my personal favorites. The violence is quite vehement because George Stevens, who recorded the European theater of war during WWII, wanted to show what real violence was like. So the two major fight sequences - particularly the one near the barn between Shane and Joe - are staged with brutal realism. I always wince at the poor horses straining to get away from them.
And the three-way relationship of the adults in the film is handled with wonderful sympathy. What a movie!
Yes, Joe knows.
Little Joey’s voice echoing at the end “And Mother wants you.”