Der Mann der Liberty Valance erschoss
Ein Senator, der als der Mann berühmt wurde, der einen berüchtigten Banditen erschoss, kehrt zur Beerdigung eines alten Freundes an den Ort des Geschehens zurück und enthüllt die wahre Gesch... Alles lesenEin Senator, der als der Mann berühmt wurde, der einen berüchtigten Banditen erschoss, kehrt zur Beerdigung eines alten Freundes an den Ort des Geschehens zurück und enthüllt die wahre Geschichte.Ein Senator, der als der Mann berühmt wurde, der einen berüchtigten Banditen erschoss, kehrt zur Beerdigung eines alten Freundes an den Ort des Geschehens zurück und enthüllt die wahre Geschichte.
- Regie
- Drehbuch
- Hauptbesetzung
- Für 1 Oscar nominiert
- 4 Gewinne & 3 Nominierungen insgesamt
Empfohlene Bewertungen
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
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.
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
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is John Ford's final homage to the western film genre that made his reputation. It's maybe the most nostalgic of westerns he ever did. Beginning with the cast all of whom are way too old for their parts. But if you notice there's a kind of soft focus photography used on John Wayne, James Stewart, and Lee Marvin which masks their age. The skill of these players does the rest.
Stewart arrives in Shinbone, a newly minted attorney who has taken Horace Greeley's advice and the stagecoach he's riding on gets held up by the local outlaw Liberty Valance and henchmen. When Stewart protests Valance, played by Lee Marvin beats him with the butt end of a silver knob whip and leaves him on the road.
He's found by John Wayne who brings him to Shinbone to get medical attention. Stewart stays with restaurant owners John Qualen and Jenanette Nolan and their daughter Vera Miles who's Wayne's girl. Miles who can't even read or write takes quite a shine to the educated easterner.
But Stewart and newspaper editor Edmond O'Brien keep getting on Liberty Valance's bad side, especially when they come out publicly for statehood whereas the big cattle ranchers who hire Liberty Valance and henchmen want to keep this part of the USA a territory for as long as they can. This is all leading to an inevitable showdown.
Lee Marvin as Liberty Valance is one evil man. No subtle psychology here, no explanations of a mom who didn't love him or a girl that dumped him, he's just an evil guy who likes being evil. If Liberty has any redeeming qualities, despite repeated viewings of this film, I haven't found any. Marvin clearly enjoyed this part, but he never turned it into a burlesque of himself. That he waited for Cat Ballou to do.
John Wayne who by this time was playing more roughhewn types than he did when he was Ringo Kid in Stagecoach, gets back to that kind of a portrayal here. He's more Ringo than he is Ethan Edwards. But that's at the beginning. Over the course of the film he changes into something like Ethan Edwards, his character from The Searchers. What happens to make him that way in fact is the story of the film.
But actually the film really does belong to Stewart. He's on screen for most of it, he's the protagonist here and until almost the end, what's happening to him is what The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is all about.
Ford once again rounds out his cast with many of his favorite players in support. Andy Devine as the cowardly marshal, John Carradine as a pompous windbag politician, Woody Strode, Denver Pyle, Strother Martin, all who had appeared in Ford films before.
There are two to single out however. This was the last film Jack Pennick ever did with John Ford. You might not know his name, but he and that horse-face countenance appeared in just about every sound John Ford film there is. He has a bit role as a bartender. Pennick died after completing this film.
Edmond O'Brien made his one and only appearance in this film as Dutton Peabody, founder, editor, and owner of the Shinbone Star and as he said himself, he sweeps the place out occasionally. He's a regular character in Ford films, the wise friend of the hero who has a bit of a drinking problem. Kind of like Thomas Mitchell as Doc Boone in Stagecoach.
Like Stewart, O'Brien is an eastern immigrant who came west to be his own newspaper editor like his former boss Horace Greeley. Words are his weapons, like the law is Stewart's. It's no wonder that these two annoy Lee Marvin so. Even the fast draw hired gun can't kill public opinion.
When they're both chosen as Shinbone's Delegates to the territorial convention it is O'Brien who makes the nominating speech to draft Stewart for the job. It is one of his finest bits in his long and distinguished career. It encapsulates a lot of what Ford was trying to say about progress and progress in the American west. In the end it is the farmer, the merchant, the builder of cities will eventually triumph just about anywhere. Stewart and he are as much pioneers as Wayne and the others in Shinbone are, they're just the next logical step.
Progress always comes at a price. We see the price in the beginning and the end of the film, the scenes of Shinbone during the early Twentieth Century. The paved streets, the electric lights are there because of who came before and what they did. There wasn't room in the changing west for many like Wayne and Marvin, their time came and went, just as Stewart's time came and went too.
Actually I think the real winner in this film was always Vera Miles. She started out as an illiterate girl working in her parent's restaurant and wound up the wife of a United States Senator. That's progress too.
Wusstest du schon
- WissenswertesJohn Wayne suggested Lee Marvin for the role of Valance after working with him in Die Comancheros (1961).
- PatzerRansom Stoddard, at the school scene, makes a reference to "truck farmer." This phrase refers not to the motorized vehicle, but to the much older use of "truck" meaning barter or commerce.
- Zitate
Ransom Stoddard: [after he tell Scott who really shot Liberty Valance] Well, you know the rest of it. l went to Washington, and we won statehood. l became the first governor.
Maxwell Scott: Three terms as governor, two terms in the Senate, Ambassador to the Court of St James, back again to the Senate, and a man who, with the snap of his fingers, could be the next vice president of the United States.
Ransom Stoddard: [Scott burns his notes] You're not going to use the story, Mr Scott?
Maxwell Scott: No, sir. This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
- VerbindungenEdited from Wells Fargo (1957)
- SoundtracksMain Theme
(The Dew Is On the Blossom) (1939) (uncredited)
from Der junge Mr. Lincoln (1939)
Music by Alfred Newman
Top-Auswahl
- How long is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?Powered by Alexa
Details
Box Office
- Budget
- 3.200.000 $ (geschätzt)
- Laufzeit2 Stunden 3 Minuten
- Farbe
- Sound-Mix
- Seitenverhältnis
- 1.85 : 1