L'homme qui tua Liberty Valance

I imagine that many will say that this movie is dated. Since it is filmed in black and white, that will add to it being viewed as an old movie.

However, I believe the characters and acting lead to a most powerful movie. While we often see heroes and heroines portrayed as perfect people, the heroes and heroines in this movie seem much more true to life. They are wonderful, but never perfect. As such the movie hits closer to home and is more heart warming than most movies.

It did take a few minutes before I saw the greatness of this movie. At the start it almost seems a normal western. But as the characters unfold, coupled with excellent acting, the movie simply becomes much more. While John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart have been in many good movies, it is this movie that I likely will remember them the best.

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.

Senator James Stewart and his wife Vera Miles get a telegram from their old home in Shinbone about the death of a friend. They arrive in Shinbone and go to a sparsely attended service. When prodded a bit by the editor of the Shinbone Star, a paper he was once employed at, Stewart sits down and tells the story of just how his political career got its start.

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.

"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

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.