The Man who shot Liberty Valance (1962)

While pursuing my project of viewing and reviewing the 1001 movies I often come across a film auteur of enormous reputation and talent.  Directors such as Hitchcock and Kubrick leave me in awe and I am excited to watch their films over and over again.   One such director, who is considered in their league, has never left that impression on me.   His name is John Ford and throughout my reviews I have come across quite a number of Ford’s films.  While I found the vast majority of these films very entertaining, other than “The Searchers”, I was never impressed enough to find hidden meaning or noticeable depth in his creations. 

His late career Western, “The man the shot Liberty Valance”, is one such movie.   Shot in eloquent and focused black and white, it tells the story of two men’s different pursuit of love and the meaning of justice.  One is a lawyer named Ranse Stoddard (James Stewart playing a straight forward Steward role), with the other being Tom Doniphon (John Wayne playing a typical Wayne role).  Both men are in love with the same woman and have a driving need to stand up to the local thug, Liberty Valance (Played with joyful menace by Lee Marvin).  The Stewart character represents the modernization of the West that is to come with the imminent arrival of the railroad and the Wayne character represents the old school eye for an eye masculine justice of the lawless frontier.   Both are good men and both love and fall in love with the local gal Hallie (Vera Miles). 

The movies is a thoughtful and at the time advanced take on the Hollywood western that is quite fascinating and played out effectively by the charming leads.   

There is nothing like a well acted and truly despicable heavy to keep interest high and Marvin’s Valance is excellent.   He does however come across a bit cartoonish with his kinky black leather outfit and evil whip.  He would have made a great comic book villain.   

The standoff duel with him and the person who shoots him is done with wonderful tension, suspense and style.  Ford makes brilliant use of the black and white shadows that emphasize the fear that is felt.   It is one of the few times in the movie that reflects the atmosphere of true danger from such a wild desolate location.   

As for the rest of the movie with its gender playing games, love interest and historical political talk, I found myself amused but secretly waiting for the action to begin.  The movie is a bit too long for my liking and a lot of scenes of characters repeating themselves could have been trimmed down.   

The main issue I had with the movie is that for all of its interesting themes, most of the surrounding characters are shallow irritating caricatures of real people.  I am pretty certain no town in the Wild West could survive with the type of Marshall we are made to believe is in charge of the fictional town of Shinbone (where most of the movie takes place).  It is not just the fat cowardly and stupid Marshall who is portrayed embarrassingly infantile.   The Swedish immigrant restaurant owners, the town newspaper man and all of the people at the local salon are treated the same way.   For some reason Ford believed buffoonish stupid people, if included in his films would serve as some sort of comic relief.  For me this took a lot of my pleasure away from the otherwise great story. 

That is too bad because there is still a lot to like about this movie.  Even today the films theme of the conflict between the rules of law vs. the rule of the gun is still relevent within some areas of the American West making the movie an enjoyable western that could have been great.