User Reviews

Nostalgic, sour and powerful, Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is one of the most memorable of all his Westerns... It's triggered off, and that's the right phrase, as it turns out, by flashback... The old device works well in the hands of the master... In fact, John Ford couldn't have got the feeling he's after in any other way...

Ford seems to be mourning the Old West... It's a mixed feeling—composed of pride, regret, and a sense of the inherent injustice of life, and certain forebodings about the future...

When a famous elderly Senator Ranse Stoddard (James Stewart), looking every inch the revered veteran political figure, gets off a train at a small Western town with his good lady (Vera Miles) you can tell by the way his eye roves for and rests on bits of time remembered that this is very much a sentimental journey… He's come to pay his last respects to a friend of the long, long ago—a small rancher in those days, played by John Wayne...

Dissolve into the distant story—presenting young tenderfoot lawyer Stewart, eagerly intent on bringing Eastern law-books to bear on the problems of the West… His first taste of the West is a sound beating up, by a man called Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) who is a gunman employed by powerful cattlemen who oppose statehood for the Territory...

Nor does Ranse find any real custom even among the law-abiding... He starts his career, in fact, as a kitchen hand in a café where he's been taken by Tom Doniphon (Wayne) following his nasty experience with Liberty... Ford is at his 'domestic' best in this café which is run by a Swedish pair (John Qualen and Jeannette Nolan) and where Ranse's wife-to-be is one of the employees... Stewart, wearing an apron contrasted with Wayne, pure frontiersman, is something to see in that kitchen... And there's always an edge to their meetings...

It isn't hard to guess that before long the waitress, Tom's girl, is going to fail for the injured tenderfoot who takes on her education... Ranse eventually hangs up his sign in the office of the local newspaper editor, Dutton Peabody, a typical 'character', played by Edmond O'Brien, and from then on it's the story of a territory growing up and seeking statehood, with Ranse Stoddard maturing, too, as the natural leader of 'civilized' law and order aspirations...

But none of it could have happened without the removal of Liberty Valance... Ranse confronts him and the bullets fly but the bullet that actually drops him comes from another Winchester in the shadows... Ranse goes to Washington on the strength of ridding the territory of Liberty Valance, but he knows that the shot was fired by another man…

It's another film about the right man being in the right place at the right time in order to advance the course of Western civilization... Skillful, undoubtedly, but in this case the right man never gets his just deserts—if he ever wanted them, because the Wayne character in his way is just as much a part of the Old West as Marvin...

Herein lies the bitter essence of the film... Wayne, at heart, is as contemptuous of what Stewart stands for—talk and conferences and thick legal tomes as the gunman is… And through him you feel Ford saying that the hard men who had it the hardest on the frontier are soon forgotten, and some of the frontier's simple virtues have been buried with them…

"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is honest, unpretentious and deeply moving... In no other Ford Western does the audience feel so involved... The playing is brilliant—from the smallest role to the beautifully interpreted ambivalent relationship of Wayne and Stewart...

Their acting style are quite different... Stewart had developed a standard repertoire of mannerisms that his public had come to cherish... Wayne's style was spare, clean and unadorned; he stood tall, very much himself... Certainly this film exemplifies a wonderful blending of three great talents, Ford's, Stewart's, and Wayne's, and their seamless mutual chemistry is one of the salient aspect of it...

It's a sad movie in many ways. Ford is closing the book on his meditations on progress here. The black and white photography itself is rather depressing -- most of the scenes, including all the important ones, seem to take place at night, in the dark. And what do they show us? As Edmund O'Brien puts it, the West began with Indians and buffalo and the only law was survival. Then the cattlemen moved in and took the land over and the law was that of the hired gun. Now the West has been settled by hard-working farmers and turns into a garden, once the power brokers are out of the way. But it's a wistful garden. The cactus roses have disappeared and been replaced by turnips. And the rowdy, raucous, plain-speaking heroes and villains have been replaced by pretentious blowhard politicians of the sort that Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) has become.

The framing story begins with Senator Stewart and his wife, Vera Miles, coming back to Shinbone for the funeral of the uknown Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). "Where are his boots?," Stewart asks upon seeing Wayne's body laid out, "Put his boots on." (Ford claimed this incident was borrowed from Tom Mix's funeral.) A few of the old crowd are still around but the streets of Shinbone are empty and are a tired gray. Everyone is now old. Stewart patronizes Wayne's old retainer, Pompey (Woody Strode), giving him a handful of bills and saying, "Pork chop money." Some "garden"!

Well, if the present is filled with nostalgia, the past is lively enough, and the flashback, which is to say most of the film, is full of action and gusto. People just don't eat in John Qualen's restaurant. They eat huge platters of steaks, beans, potatoes, and deep dish apple pie. The steaks come sizzling from the vast greasy grill and are large enough to hang over the edges of the over-sized platters. Lee Marvin and his henchmen (Lee Van Cleef and Strother Martin) enact their villainy with relish. John Wayne is, of course, the hero of the tale. You can tell because, in addition to his John Wayneness, he wears the only black and white outfit in the cast, which draws attention to his figure whenever it is on screen.

In fact, though, Wayne does a reasonably decent job of playing Doniphon after his fall. When he enters the political meeting toward the end, banging open the swinging doors, staggering slightly, bearded, shabby, his magnificent white hat replaced by a battered gray one, slightly bleary, he looks and acts like a man who has been defeated but has not yet died, putting up a brave front with nothing left behind to prop it up. He's not bad in this scene. For the most part, though, he plays John Wayne, the resolute, proud man of principle. Edmund O'Brien is the comic town drunk and editor, the Thomas Mitchell part, and is given some amusing lines, including quotes from Henry V. (Actually O'Brien was pretty good in MGM's "Julius Caesar," as Casca, making Shakepeare's lines believable enough.)

The principle Doniphon represents, however, is O'Brien's second stage of the West's development. He's not only a rancher but a gunman, soon to be replaced by farmers and lawyers, but it's only at the final shootout that he realizes it. He saves Stewart's life the old-fashioned way, then gives up any plans of marriage to Vera Miles, gets drunk, and drives himself and Pompey back to the ranch he'd planned as a home. He burns the ranch down. He and Strode had a problem shooting the arrival at the ranch. Wayne lost control of the horses and Strode reached over to help. Wayne pushed him brusquely out of the way and Strode fell from the wagon. Angry, he threatened Wayne, and Wayne responded the way Wayne would respond. Strode, a former fullback, was several years younger than Wayne and in good shape. Ford stopped the altercation by shouting that the movie needed Wayne's face in one piece.

For all its darkness, however, the movie reflects some of Ford's prejudices in his comic way. A pompous orator at the political meeting (John Carradine) announces in his stentorian public voice that he came here with "a carefully prepared speech" but is going to disregard it and speak the truth. Here he crinkles up the speech and throws it contemptuously to the floor. Someone picks the page up and uncrumples it to find it blank on both sides. The rhetoric is extremely funny -- "The bullet-riddled body of an honest citizen?" -- recalling Donald Meek in "Young Mister Lincoln." During a carefully choreographed spontaneous demonstration after the cattlemen's candidate has been nominated, a band plays, a cowboy rides up onto the speaker's platform and twirls a lasso, and there is a brief shot of the Chairman staring appalled at the cowboy's horse lapping water out of the chairman's pitcher.

But it's still a sad comment from Ford. His earlier work brimmed with hope for the future. Here, the future has arrived and it makes one long for the past. The principled lawyer is now a windbag politician. It's the way an old man might feel about life in general.

It's the way anyone of maturity might feel about reviewing his past when faced with an almost unrecognizable younger person who happens to bear his name.

Some films are slow to give up their secrets first time round and need some time to elapse before they are revalued. An opportunity to see "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" after a gap of several years turned out to be an unexpectedly rewarding experience. It had never been one of my favourite Ford films; indeed I was always puzzled why many rate it so highly in the canon. Its rather plain black-and-white visuals smack of low production values and it has little of the grand operatic sweep of many of his other Westerns. I can now see that I was rather missing the point: "Liberty Valance" is that rare thing, a chamber Western, a quiet and elegiac reappraisal of the legends of the West made almost at the end of Ford's creative career with "Cheyenne Autumn" the only Western still to come. A U.S. senator played by James Stewart returns with his wife (Vera Miles at her most attractive) to the small Western town, where, as a young man, he tied to set up a law business, to attend the funeral of the man (John Wayne) who saved his life when he tried to rid the community of its villain, Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Ford's Westerns had always been the stuff of legend. Now, towards the end of his career, he began to take the legend apart. The hero is not the one who goes on to become one of the town's most illustrious sons but the quiet man who fades into the background. It needs more than idealism to overcome evil, the film seems to be saying, Brute force has to be countered by brute force; moreover, true worth is not always rewarded or recognised by society. It is a bleak message that Ford is giving us. By homing in on character and plot to a far greater extent than usual, he gives us an experience that is often more akin to filmed theatre than cinema. There are unusually long sequences in studio built interiors, the diner, the bar and a theatre where an election adoption meeting is taking place. Outdoor sequences are few and far between. Instead of a large collective enemy such as marauding Indian tribes there is just the one baddy and his pair of sycophants. The pivotal action scene where Liberty Valance receives his just deserts takes place in a dark street and has none of the climactic sense of drama to be found in such shootouts as "My Darling Clementine" of Zinnemann's "High Noon". I can at last see that those very limitations that for so so long prevented me from appreciating "Liberty Valance" give it a sense of concentration and strength that the Western rarely achieves.

John Ford's 1962 film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, is an ode to the end of the classic western. It is a satiric look at the civilizing of the once wild American west where Ford deliberately uses stereotypical characters and situations to undermine and reexamine the very myths that he helped create. Ford's world is one of moral certainty and untamed villainy where legends are born and cowboy heroes ride free amidst the broad natural landscapes of America's West. In the west of Liberty Valance, the hero is not made nor born, but manufactured by the media. As the editor of the Shinbone Star says; "This is the West. When the legend becomes the fact, print the legend."

The legend concerns lawyer Ransom Stoddard, played in typical earnest aw-shucks fashion by Jimmy Stewart. Stoddard has been brought, bruised and beaten, to the western town of Shinbone following an altercation with a gang of stagecoach highwaymen, led by arch-villain Liberty Valance. As played by Lee Marvin, Valance is deadpan and over-the top evil. His uncompromising performance is one of the pleasures of the film. With his lethal black whip and his giggling and glowering henchmen (played by Strother Martin and Lee VanCleef), Marvin is unabashedly nasty and taunting at every turn. His nemesis is that stalwart icon of the heroic west, John Wayne as Tom Doniphan. His code of honor is as solid as his skill with a six-gun. Doniphan knows that might rules the west, and will inevitably vanquish evil. But Stoddard's mission is to see that justice is done through the more civilized rule of law. Of his nemesis Valance, Stoddard says; 'I don't want to kill him, I just want to put him in jail!' Not likely, in John Ford's west.

Into the mix come a parade of character actors whose vivid stereotypes have enlivened westerns for decades: Edmond O'Brien as the drunken but noble newspaper editor; Andy Devine as the whimpering, good-hearted, but cowardly sheriff; Woody Strode as the silent, noble black man, backbone of the west; and last and most essential is Vera Miles as Hallie, for whose heart our heroes compete. It is in that romantic triangle that the real heart of west may be won. In this way the Hallie, like the cactus rose she carries to Doniphan's funeral, becomes a bittersweet symbol for the loss and the hope of the new west.

Ford makes Liberty Valance into a western that seems to examine itself as a western. He removes the window dressing to focus on the intricate play of characters and symbols. Gone is the Technicolor of the Searchers. This is in stark black and white. Gone are the outdoor landscapes of Ford's west. Most of the film looks like it was on the back lot, and many scenes take place indoors. He moves his camera in on faces not vistas. The world of 1960's America was changing and beginning to reexamine the usefulness of certain cultural mythologies. The new decade was about people; the grand ideals of postwar America were being reexamined and were about to become even dimmer with the assassination of President Kennedy. America was beginning to be about recognizing unique individualities, about embracing change, about individual rights, strong women, sensitive men. Ford didn't like that much, I imagine. The film's characters are flawed and cartoonish. I suspect his film was a wry satire on his own mythology and a critique of what he viewed as a softening of American society. Some critics didn't get it, while others consider this one of his more remarkable films. There is no doubt that it is nothing short of brilliant the ability to balance the elements of satire and seriousness, comedy and melodrama.

As the train leaves Shinbone, the truth forever gives way to the legend. The conductor leans over to light Stoddard's cigar saying; 'Nothing is too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance.' In that moment we are incredibly moved. This is, after all, about the creation of stories. But in those stories there live truths about human nature that are universal and forever.

Westerns aren't normally my favourite so it has to be a good one, and this one starring two legends, James Stewart & John Wayne, is surely one of the best. It ranks with me right behind High Noon.

It tells the tale of an aging Washington Senator, Ranse Stoddard, who returns to Shinbone, his (sometime) hometown in the West with his wife, Hallie, for the funeral of their friend, Tom Doniphon. While there he relates his story to a journalist, telling how he came to Shinbone as a young lawyer and met there both Tom & Hallie (who was formerly Tom's sweetheart). He became famous as the man who shot the notorious bandit, Liberty Valence, which kick started his political career.

However, Stoddard realizes that this career is based on a lie, and he experiences his own guilt dealing with it. The shot that actually killed Valence came from another gun, not his own. The film emphatically makes the point that perception (or rumour reported as truth) and reality are not necessarily one and the same thing. The public has lauded Stoddard all these years for a heroic deed he didn't really do.

The movie has marvelous characters and a stellar cast portraying them. Both Ranse Stoddard and Tom Doniphon, though seemingly opposite, come across as sympathetic, honourable men with great personal integrity. This is a film with TWO heroes, protagonist & antagonist to one another... though jointly opposing the villainous Valence. The legendary James Stewart, such a decent man himself, is perfect in the role of the noble lawyer & Senator Ranse Stoddard, who is initially opposed to gun violence, advocating education and the rule of law. He is not too proud to don an apron and wash dishes to pay for his keep. That great Western hero, John Wayne, is forceful (as always) portraying the rough hewn Tom Doniphon. His philosophy is 'the gun is the law', and he has little respect for either book learning or law courts.

Lee Marvin is downright deliciously sullen & evil as the whip wielding Liberty Valence. I love that restaurant steak scene, he's just so despicable the way he holds the terrified citizenry in his grip! Few villains elicit more outrage than his heinous acts against Dutton Peabody, the drunken editor of the Shinbone Star. Liberty Valence...what an absolutely fabulous name for this wretched snake! Can you imagine any other name in the movie title?

This film seems to take a nostalgic look at the decline of the Old West and its replacement with modern civilization. Tom Doniphon of course represents the rugged frontier West. He is actually dead throughout this movie, his character revealed only through the flashback retelling of the story. By contrast, Ranse Stoddard brings from the East law and literacy to this Western town. From the time he first comes to Shinbone as a young lawyer, he teaches its inhabitants to read & write.

The conflict between the old frontier ways and the new educated society based on law & order is clearly revealed in the love triangle here. Both Tom Doniphon and Ranse Stoddard court the lovely and quietly spirited Hallie (played by Vera Miles). The cactus rose symbolizes her early attraction to Tom and the Old West, the real rose her newfound romance with Ranse and his Eastern sophistication. Her courtship by Tom is eventually replaced by her marriage to Ranse, causing Tom's increased drinking and gradual decline.

Other characters include the drunken Doc Willoughby and the cowardly Marshall Link Appleyard, who shrinks away from dealing with Valence. The movie is a compelling metaphor for the decline of the Old West, has a gripping plot, and surely some of the best character depictions ever. All told, it's a wonderful movie for both fans of westerns and for those who are normally not.

Nothing extraordinary about this overlong, preachy, melodramatic n actionless western.

Apart from the three big names, the other good things were the huge platters of steaks, beans, potatoes, and deep dish apple pie.

A young lawyer (Stewart) fresh outta law school heads for the West looking for adventure n fame. On his way his stagecoach is robbed by a sadistic bully named Valance (Lee Marvin). The lawyer is whipped n left to die. He is saved by Doniphon (Wayne), the only person in the town who can beat Valance. The film is devoid of any good showdown n is a bit lengthy n preachy at times. The performances r top notch but the action was missing. Nothing is explained about the demise, the burning down of the house didn't make any sense, Peabody jus disappeared n the shootout was a big cheat.

Generous with 7 cos of Wayne, Stewart, Marvin, Ford n Van Cleef n of course the lovely steaks n apple pies.

John Ford was the first to see the potential in John Wayne and helped shape his image in a series of a classic westerns, including Stagecoach, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Searchers. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, is the most subtle treatment of Wayne's character, and represents one of his most fully realized roles, approaching the tragic in its depth. The film deals with the passing of the American West's values of freedom and independence. In many ways it is a summation and re-examination of the whole notion of the West as promulgated by Wayne and Ford. The story begins at the turn of the 19th century. Senator Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart), is traveling by train to Shinbone, the town of his youth, for the funeral of Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). Stoddard is a senior senator with presidential aspirations. Doniphon is an unknown. Stoddard and his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles) go to the undertaker and stand before the plain box that holds Doniphon. Enter the local press. They must know why the Senator has gone out his way to attend the funeral of an unknown cowhand. There is an old stagecoach on blocks at the undertaker's—a reference to the stagecoach that marked Wayne's breakthrough role. Stewart hems and haws, dusts off the old stage. It looks like the one that brought him to Shinbone decades before. And so the retelling begins. It is the 1870's. Stoddard is a young lawyer journeying by stage to make his fortune out west. Bandits waylay the stage and Stoddard is beaten by the eponymous Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Stoddard is the symbol of eastern civilization, impotent in the face of Valance's lawlessness. In the next scene we see Doniphon entering Shinbone with the beaten Stoddard thrown into the back of his buckboard. Between the impotent Stoddard and the lawless Valance is the figure of Doniphon, the only man whom Valance fears, and pillar of the town, friend to the newspaper editor, beau to Hallie, and foil to the inept marshal (Andy Devine). Shinbone is a dysfunctional town. Legal authority, as embodied by Devine, is cowardly, gluttonous and corrupt. Stoddard, the man with the intellectual ability to bring law to the town, is devoid of authority. Doniphon, the man who has the physical power and respect of the town to give force to the law and bring order to Shinbone hews to a code of individualism that keeps him from committing to the notion of a civil society. The political climate is fertile; statehood is being discussed and will change everything, bringing the rule of law and threatening the open range. At the local meeting to elect representatives, Valance tries to disrupt the proceedings but is held in place by Doniphon. Stoddard nominates Doniphon as a man uniquely qualified to represent the region. If he accepts the nomination, he unites physical and legal authority, bringing order to Shinbone and relegates Valance to the periphery. But he refuses. Accepting such a role is incongruent with his notions of individuality. Stoddard and the newspaper editor are instead elected. Valance vows revenge. Instead of supporting Stoddard, Doniphon counsels flight. He arranges a buckboard to take Stoddard out of town before Valance arrives that night to have it out with him. Doniphon's abdication leaves Stoddard with the decision: leave the town in the clutches of Valance, or stand and challenge him. Stoddard calls Valance out. Valance toys with him, shooting the gun out of his hand. Stoddard picks up the gun. Valance takes aim. Stoddard fires. Valance falls dead. Miraculously, Stoddard has liberated the town, also winning the heart of Hallie. Wayne goes on a bender, drinking himself into a stupor, then burns down his home, symbolically burning his own hopes for the future. He has lost everything. But the depth of his loss only becomes apparent later. Stoddard goes to the state convention, heralded as "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." On this wave of popularity, he is elected to represent the state in Washington, launching his career. As he is elected, Doniphon enters the hall. He is drunk and haggard. He calls Stoddard into a back room and confronts him. "You didn't shoot Valance, Pilgrim," he tells Stoddard, "Think back, Pilgrim." We dissolve to the gunfight in the street, this time from Doniphon's POV. He stands in an alley. As Valance makes his final shot, Doniphon shoots him, the shot simultaneous with Stoddard's, killing Valence, but in a manner without honor. In doing so, he loses his self- respect and violates the code by which he has lived. This illuminates his raging drunk. All is lost. Wayne approaches the tragic in this role. He was the best, but because of the limitations of his code, he defers acting against Valance and defers again. When leadership comes his way, he refuses. When events force him to act, he must do so in a manner that is dishonorable. Doniphon's only sin is that of pride—he will not stoop to the needs of the group and holds himself aloof. For this alone, he fails and ultimately transgresses against all he stands for. When Stoddard and his wife return to Shinbone for the funeral, their solemnity springs guilt. Stoddard has traded on the Valance shooting his entire career and he knows that he has lived a lie. Ironically, the reporter tears up the story at the end, saying "When the legend becomes the truth, print the legend." John Ford made the western what it is today. Here he gives us movie that is a complex and, at times sardonic, critique of the genre, while at the same time giving Wayne his deepest, most tragic role. There was not to be another western of equivalent depth until Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. It rewards repeated viewing and is a capstone to the career of Mr. Wayne.

I either love or hate John Ford's early movies; there's no middle ground. Anyone who admired F. W. Murnau as much as Ford had to be touched by the great man's fire, but many of Ford's well-regarded films, "The Iron Horse," "Young Mr. Lincoln," and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," seem dreadfully mannered and stylized compared to "3 Bad Men," "Stagecoach," "My Darling Clementine," and "Fort Apache." After 1948 Ford embraced his worst idiosyncrasies, as did his co-dependent John Wayne, who became an enthusiastic promoter of his own "legend."

Not heeding the glaring defects in Ford's worst films, the film school generation of directors in the 1970s over-praised films that were rightfully panned by the critics. One of the travesties they promoted to "classic" status is Ford's adaptation of the interesting Dorothy Johnson short story "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

In Johnson's story "Rance" Foster is an insufferable eastern snob itching to face Liberty Valance in a gun duel because the outlaw had savagely beat him for no reason, injuring his sense of eastern superiority. Cowboy Bert Burricane saves him from dying of thirst on the prairie, but he repays Burricane with indifference and, on his own, begins pistol practice for his showdown with Valance. He dislikes everyone in town because he's humiliated at having to take a swamper's job in a saloon. And although Burricane's girl Hallie is drawn to Rance because of his education, he conceals his attraction for her because he's embarrassed to show interest in an illiterate girl he's teaching to read. When Valance comes to town Rance jumps at the opportunity to meet the outlaw and gain respect in the eyes of others even if it means his death. Burricane kills Valance from a concealed vantage point just as the two men fire, making it look as if Rance killed Valance. When Burricane tells Rance he killed Valance, he explains that he did it because he loves Hallie enough to let her have the man she wants. After recovering from a wound he received in the gunfight, Rance marries Hallie and is elected Senator in part because of publicity generated by the shooting. Years later when Burricane dies alone and forgotten, Rance returns to show respect for the man who changed him.

But instead of making James Stewart's character, Rance Stoddard, an eastern snob, Ford and his writers make him an idealistic young lawyer, uncomfortable with guns, who is beaten by Valance when he stands up for fellow passengers in a stagecoach holdup, and who continues to seek remedy through the law until forced into one desperate, violent act. John Wayne's character, Tom Doniphon, doesn't save Rance from his macho pride for Hallie's sake. He maintains his usual tough guy persona, urging Stoddard to get a gun, a man who is disappointed to find, when he loses Hallie after killing Valance, that the gunman's day is past. In Johnson's story the tough westerner ironically must teach the easterner to be a gentle man. But that's too radical a concept for Ford and the writers, who subvert Johnson's irony to make her story fit the western conventions she was trying to deflate.

But aside from the watered-down story, there are still the seemingly obligatory Ford inanities. Wayne and Stewart were certainly too old for their parts, and O. Z. Whitehead, who was one of Ford's Stock Company in '40s, plays a sullen, truant teenager in Stoddard's school, even though he was in his fifties. Then there is Woody Strode's "Yassuh, Boss" portrayal of Tom Doniphon's "boy" Pompey, and Edmund O'Brien's bombastic, drunken newspaper editor, an over-the-top ripoff of Thomas Mitchell's Doc Boone from "Stagecoach." And Ford insists yet again on having John Qualen annoy us with his best stage-Swedish accent.

I had seen this film many years ago when I was a lot younger, and thought it was a pretty good Western. The passage of time and a keener focus reveals a lot more going on in this movie than a conflict between two good men and the killing of an outlaw gunman. Surface generalities aside, the story is about the passing of an era, with the bullets of a bygone time about to be replaced by the subtler but just as lethal machinations of the political machine.

There's another way to look at the events surrounding the death of Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Suppose Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) made up the story about shooting Valance to save Ransom Stoddard's hide. It would have been just another savage way of further emasculating Jimmy Stewart's character upon realizing that Hallie (Vera Miles) was never going to be his girl. After all, he wasn't above humiliating Ranse with the mean spirited paint can demonstration where his rage was more palpable. I'm not advancing that hypothesis by the way, but it's an interesting conjecture that fits, and isn't denied by any of the other facts of the story.

There's a rather strange moment in the picture that director Ford opted to keep. When Stoddard addresses the town meeting about to nominate representatives to Washington, he walks from behind a desk and hits his head on the bottom of the stairwell. He looks at the stair, and without skipping a beat, keeps on talking to the audience. I wonder if it hurt?

Even stranger though is the sequence when Wayne's character leaves town after drinking heavily and arrives home with his ward Pompey (Woody Strode). In town he has a black shirt, arriving at home it's a light colored one. Breaking the door in, the shirt is black again, and when Pompey saves him from the fire, it's not only light colored again, but with a set of buttons that go down to the belt line. Finally, the shirt is black again in the final scene of that sequence.

For his final team up with John Wayne, Ford seems to go for caricature with many of the figures here. Most obvious is Lee Marvin's title character, Liberty Valance. He's pretty much allowed free reign as a nut case, and even though Andy Devine's usual persona as a do nothing lawman is somewhat expected, he's totally ineffective in enforcing anything in the town of Shinbone. Liberty's henchman Floyd (Strother Martin) is irritating as a whiny outlaw, and Lee Van Cleef has disappointingly too little screen time to be of consequence. Perhaps the most over the top performance is delivered by John Carradine, with macho exuberance and a name to match as Major Cassius Starbuckle.

There's a lot going on in 'Liberty Valance' with repeat viewings recommended to uncover even more nuances. This is one Western that doesn't fit the typical mold, where preconceptions are shot down like cans on a fence post. It's a look at the wild west coming to an end with a blend of nostalgia, romance and grit that offers an effective glimpse at legend before succumbing to fact.