John Ford’s 1962 film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, is an ode to the end of the classic western, a satiric look at the civilizing of the once wild American West. Ford deliberately uses stereotypical characters and situations to undermine and reexamine the same myths that he forged as one of the country’s seminal directors. His is a world of moral certainty and untamed villainy, where legends are born, and cowboy heroes ride free in wide-open natural landscapes and dusty towns administering justice, taming the wild frontier. To the consternation of critics and audiences of 1962, Ford removes all the grandeur of his previous masterpiece, The Searchers. That film’s ambivalent hero was a cunning reexamination of the myth of the west. The hero of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 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.”
That legend concerns Congressman, Ransom Stoddard (played in typical earnest aw-shucks fashion by Jimmy Stewart) who, after journeying west by train to the small town of Shinbone to honor the death of an old friend, tells the tale that begins the story. Recounted in flashback, we see that decades before the railroad crisscrossed this untamed land, Stoddard, then a young lawyer traveled west by stagecoach to seek his fortune. He was “following Horace Greeley’s advice, ‘Go West, Young Man’”. There encounters a gang of stagecoach highwaymen, led by arch-villain Liberty Valance, who rob and beat him mercilessly. As played by Lee Marvin, Valance is deadpan, over-the top evil. 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 uncompromising performance is one of the pleasures of the film.
Stoddard is found and brought to Shinbone, by Valance’s nemesis, that stalwart icon of the heroic west, John Wayne as Tom Doniphan, whose 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 live truths about human nature that are universal and forever
