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With Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne leading the way, it's easy to join the caravan of people who enjoy The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. This movie tells a compelling story about the changing atmosphere of West as well as the impact of legends. It's also full of interesting characters, including Lee Marvin as a despicable villain. I completely understand why this Western is considered a classic.

Based on a short story by Dorothy M. Johnson, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE tells the story of Ransom Stoddard, an eastern attorney who has the misfortune to be victimized by notorious outlaw Liberty Valance during a stagecoach robbery. Left for dead, Stoddard is rescued by rancher Tom Doniphon and brought to the small town of Shinbone. Disgusted by the lawlessness of the area, he determines to use not a gun but the law itself to end Valance's reign of terror.

Released in 1962, VALANCE was among the last films directed by John Ford, who was more closely associated with the Western than any other Hollywood director--and in one sense it certainly has the classic "good guy vs. bad guy" plot one expects from from a western classic. But Ford was not a superficial artist, and VALANCE is a remarkably multi-layered film that plays much deeper than you might expect.

Tom Doniphon is all that is right about the west; Liberty Valance is all that is wrong. But both are part and parcel of the same code, a society in which law and order are merely words on the lips of a cowardly marshal, a world where a man either dominates through fear or is dominated by it. It is a world that is coming to an end--and Rance Stoddard is in the vanguard of the new civilization. Both Doniphon and Liberty must fall before Stoddard if the worst of the west is to be tamed.

The cast is superior. James Stewart (Stoddard) and John Wayne (Doniphon) have unexpected chemistry on screen, and Lee Marvin (Valance) is easily one of the most unpleasant black-hats you could ever want to see in a western, vicious to the point of being psychotic. Supporting players Vera Miles, Andy Devine, Edmund O'Brien, and Woody Strode are equally fine. Although the script is occasionally a shade overwrought, it is laced with a very fine irony and sense of loss, and John Ford brings all the various pieces together without beating the viewer to death in the process.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This was a film that my class had to watch in a High School Literature class, so it has been a little while since I watched it. Although it is classified as a western film, it does not really follow through with what most would consider a western; it takes place in the western states, and the characters are cowboys, but it is a civilised film following the different characters and their fate. I could not find anything to fault with this film whatsoever. It was engaging and entertaining and was shown to us in school as an example of good film-making. I cannot agree more with that comment. I think that everyone should watch this film and think about what this film teaches.

Anticipating Peckinpah and Eastwood, John Ford's Hamlet-like Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance deconstructs the legends of the Old West as a place where good always triumphed over evil and civilization overcame barbarism, a myth that he helped to create. Ford's 1962 film, based on the story by Dorothy M. Johnson, looks at how myths are created and, in its complex vision of the passing of an era, both pines for the lawless open spaces and eagerly anticipates the railroads bringing paved roads, schools, and law enforcement. The film contains the classic phrase "When truth becomes legend, print the legend", cited by a journalist who refuses to print newly discovered facts about an incident surrounded in myth that took place years before.

While there are stereotypes and all-too familiar stock characters, Liberty Valance succeeds because of strong performances by John Wayne as the macho embodiment of the old school, and Jimmy Stewart as the man who brings literacy and respect for law to the small town, though unconvincing as a young man just out of law school. Shot in black and white on a studio sound stage, the film opens with gray-haired Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) arriving at a small frontier town named Shinbone with his wife Hallie (Vera Miles). Met at the train station by a reporter eager for a story, Senator Stoddard tells him that he came to attend the funeral of an old friend, Tom Doniphon (John Wayne).

It is there that he reunites with Tom's dependable ranch hand Pompey (Woody Strode) and, since no one remembers Tom Doniphon, relates his story that takes us back to the time before the coming of the railroads. As Stoddard tells it, he was a young law graduate who arrived from the East in a stagecoach, following the advice "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country" first made in 1851 by John B. L. Soule, editor of the Terre Haute Express and incorrectly attributed to Horace Greeley. His welcome to Shinbone, however, is not what he had hoped. He is met by a sadistic bandit named Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) who robs the stagecoach and beats Stoddard after he tries to protect a female passenger.

Rancher Tom Doniphon finds him unconscious and brings him to Hallie, his girlfriend's house. When Stoddard recovers, he asks the Marshal Link Appleyard (Andy Devine) to make an arrest but Doniphon soon sets him straight about how justice is done in Shinbone - with the barrel of a gun. Without money, Stoddard works in the family restaurant as a dishwasher and also for the editor of the local newspaper, a man named Dutton Peabody (Edmond O'Brien) who is overly fond of the bottle.

Ransom develops an interest in Hallie and soon sets up classes to teach her and other locals how to read and write and also to convey the finer points of democracy and its institutions. Threatened by Valance and taunted by Doniphon, Stoddard goes against his ideals and learns how to shoot a gun with the help of Doniphon who "educates" him and shows him the error of his liberal ways.

After Stoddard and Peabody defeat Valance in an election to be representatives to the Sate Senate and an editorial appears contrasting the goals of statehood with the interests of Valance and the cattlemen, Dutton is severely beaten by Valance who then baits Stoddard into a gunfight. The showdown between Stoddard and Liberty is the centerpiece of the film and the shot heard round the West allows the victor to build an entire career based on the incident.

The legend of Shinbone will soon be joined by real-life icons Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill, and Kit Carson and the truth about the West with its corruption, misogyny, domination of the weak by the strong, and Native American genocide will be quietly buried. John Ford helped to romanticize the West and create the myth and, now in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, he allows us to understand its melancholy and its lie.

"This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend". - Maxwell Scott, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance In John Ford's most mournful tale, the legendary director asks the question "How did this present come to be? Just how did an inferior race of men whose only weapon was that of law and books defeat the old gunslingers of the great West? Just what exactly happened to the Western heroes portrayed by John Wayne when law and order came to town? How did the wilderness turn into a garden? In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, John Ford depicts a world where everyone has got everything they wanted, but nobody seems happy with it… sound familiar to anyone? Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) arrives to Shinbone on a train with his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) to visit the funeral of an old friend named Tom Doniphon (John Wayne, remarkably the film opens where this iconic star is dead). The newspaper men have never heard of him, so why would such a powerful political figure visit the town to attend this funeral of a "nobody"? Through the use of a flashback, Stoddard tells us the tale of how he came to the town as a young lawyer but was immediately attacked by the psychotic villain Liberty Valance (terrifyingly played by Lee Marvin) who teaches him "Western law". The rest of the film tells the tale of how the man of books eventually defeated the race of the gunslinger and what sacrifices had to be made for that to happen.

In truth, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is more of a melodrama than a Western. Gone are the vibrant landscapes of Ford's landmark movie The Searchers six years earlier, which was so proudly promoted as being in VISTAVISION WIDESCREEN COLOR and instead the film has given way to a bleak, claustrophobic black and white tale, with so many enclosed sets and not one shot of Monument Valley.

There's a lack of a real bar scene, lack of shots of the landscape, lack of horses, lack of gunfights. It's a psychological Western, probably unlike anything ever filmed until maybe Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven.

Why is this movie so good then? In basic terms, it's about the sadness of progression and without giving way too much away the film tells a remarkable tale which truly does examine what Ford's view of the West as promoted in his earlier work truly meant. It's a tragic and pessimistic movie but it's a rewarding one, with huge replay value and one that leaves you with so many more questions than it does answers.

Do we prefer the legendary tale of our heroes or the truth? Are tales of people such as 'The Man With No Name' just more interesting than Wyatt Earp? Is living a lie as a successful guy better or worse than quietly dying as a hero? The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of the most complex Westerns that has ever been put on film and is a remarkable film when you consider it was directed by a guy who made his living telling grandeur tales of the American West. Well acted, very well written and is one of the most rewarding Westerns for replay value in the history of the genre.

Matt Holmes

www.obsessedwithfilm.com