“That is the west sir. When the legend turns into reality, print the legend.” The well-known line uttered by a newspaperman in John Ford’s masterpiece The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance symbolizes the mythological west that he and his most well-known collaborator, John Wayne popularized. At 60 years previous, it’s the biggest western of Hollywood’s Golden Age, even usurping Ford’s personal The Searchers that has all the time clambered its approach close to the highest of biggest movie lists.
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The story focuses on Ransome Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart), an American senator arriving on the city of Shinbone together with his spouse, Hailey (Vera Miles), to attend the funeral of Tom Doniphon (Wayne). By flashback, Stoddard tells his story to the press of first coming to the city as a younger regulation graduate. The townsfolk are terrorised by gang chief Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin in a career-best function). Valance works for the native cattle barons, who’re combating the territory’s proper to statehood. Doniphon is the one one who can stand as much as Valance, however Stoddard believes that authorized justice can prevail in opposition to him. In between that, there’s a love triangle between Stoddard, Hailey and Doniphon. After which there’s the query: who was the person who would finally shoot Liberty Valance?Ford’s imaginative and prescient of the west has change into synonymous with how audiences understand it. It’s nearly inconceivable not to consider the American frontier with out John Wayne framed in opposition to Monument Valley’s harsh terrain. Scorsese referred to as the director the “essence of basic American cinema”. Orson Welles watched Ford’s Stagecoach 40 occasions to know find out how to direct his first movie (that movie being Citizen Kane). However a lot of Ford’s affect has been misplaced on modern moviegoers. Although he created the romantic notion of the west, features of his work have come beneath scrutiny. Particularly, his depiction of Native Individuals as typically faceless cannon fodder for Wayne’s rifle. Even The Searchers has been endlessly debated by critics whether or not the director endorsed or condemned the protagonist’s racist actions.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance shouldn’t be a movie about American heroes however concerning the nation itself. Ford brilliantly captures this by the personas of its two main actors that had been cultivated over the previous a long time. He’s self-critical of each his personal legacy as a film-maker and the nation that he helped mythologize. If The Nice Gatsby is the good American novel, then that is the good American movie.
Because the Thirties, Stewart all the time represented the good-natured raconteur who stood up in opposition to companies and bullies. He was not an intimidating determine however all the time prevailed in opposition to injustice and barely relied on violence as his key technique to victory. “Nobody fights my battles,” Stoddard exclaims angrily to Doniphon. He by no means desires to make use of violence as the strategy to take down Valance (“I don’t need to kill him; I need to put him in jail”). Even when he performed darker roles like in Vertigo, Stewart was all the time intensely likable. Nevertheless, Ford is important about whether or not such a law-abiding citizen can actually achieve America. By the top, Stoddard nonetheless detests violence, however to realize liberty, he should shoot Liberty. In America, violence will all the time take priority over language. “What’s studying and writing ever executed you,” Hailey exclaims to Stoddard.Conversely, Wayne’s persona consisted of action, typically involving the draw of a pistol to resolve his issues. Although he spoke with an extended drawl, his phrases had been as violent because the bullets he fired. Finally, America is a rustic constructed on violence, and thus to protect its ideology, a bullet will all the time change greater than phrases. However violence comes at a value. And Doniphon, who as soon as favoured brute ferocity is condemned to the results of utilizing it.
Melancholic and downbeat, there’s nothing glamorised concerning the west right here. Ford’s breakthrough western Stagecoach showcased the chaotically brutal however equally adventurous facet of the west. In Liberty Valance, the older Stoddard sees the stagecoach that first introduced him to Shinbone, now lowered to a dusty, broken-down relic of the previous. Like Stoddard, Ford’s personal Stagecoach introduced him to the forefront as America’s premier film-maker. With the New Hollywood motion a couple of years away, it’s as if Ford foresees himself as an out of date artefact.
James Stewart, Lee Marvin and John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. {Photograph}: Paramount/AllstarDespite the polarizing racial politics of his filmography, one of the poignant moments options Stewart instructing the illiterate townsfolk find out how to learn and write. Wayne’s African American sidekick, Pompey (Woody Strode), is requested to recite the American structure from reminiscence however forgets the sentence that “all males are created equal”. Stewart replies: “That’s fairly all proper Pompey, lots of people overlook that a part of it.” Sixty years on, folks nonetheless appear to overlook that half.As all the time, Ford brings his signature visible poetry to each body. Doniphon is commonly framed in shadow to mirror his personal private, violent philosophy creeping into Stoddard’s psyche. And a shot of a cactus rose positioned on a coffin is the best illustration of unfulfilled love in movie historical past.It’s a movie not pushed by heroism however by remorse on the selections and lies that had been made in making America’s basis. Wayne’s final scene shouldn’t be a triumphant, gallant trip into the sundown, however bitterness and disappointment at dropping the girl he cherished to Stewart. American masculinity by no means regarded extra defeated. And Stoddard is not any Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Although he has introduced statehood to Shinbone, he has executed it by a way that goes in opposition to his private convictions (“Isn’t it sufficient to kill a person with out making an attempt to construct a life on it?”).Although not Ford’s final western, it serves as his personal eulogy to the style he helped form. Wayne’s personal legacy as an icon of radical conservative politics meant the director’s work was steadily interpreted as being intertwined with them. By burying his well-known main man, Ford has put an finish to the mythic John Wayne character that was launched in Stagecoach. After 50 years of constructing westerns, perhaps he felt the legend was not value printing.
