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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ReviewsRating: 4 - I'm Really Not a Fan of Westerns, But............ John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is a marvelous movie, regardless of how you feel about Westerns. This isn't a movie about outlaws, or something violent, but a study of the fight between old and new in our society. John Wayne's rugged cowboy represents the old, untamed west. Jimmy Stewart's refined and educated lawyer represents the order and civilized nature of a new west. Both clearly love the land they live on in different ways, and when the time comes to protect the people of the west from the evil Liberty Valance (played to perfection by Lee Marvin), they team up to save the day. In the end, Stewart's way of life, the way of progress, wins out. However, as can be seen by the memories the major characters have at the start of the film, the old west never really dies. The movie is just brilliant, with all the leads in top form, especially the forgotten Vera Miles as the woman both Wayne and Stewart love. Rating: 5 - One of John Wayne's best Critics of John Wayne have often said that he only ever played one kind of Western character: a crude, tough-as-nails, trigger-happy, and irrational man who mistreated women but got their love anyway. Well, this movie should silence those critics. Wayne plays a gunslinger all right, but the character here (Tom Doniphan) is a unique one, to be sure. Also starring in this movie is James Stewart, who plays a young lawyer coming to bring 'law and order' to the West. He manages to get tangled up with a notorious villain, Liberty Vallance (Lee Marvin), and from there he and Doniphan's paths cross until SOMEBODY shoots Liberty. This is a great film by a great Director (John Ford). It leaves you with something to think about, and will definitely not allow you to think of the Duke's character (Doniphan) as a flat, one-sided gunman. In fact, this is Ford's idea of a sort of Western tragedy, and it is a good one. For storyline and plot, there are few John Wayne movies that top the Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance. When this movie came out, some critics complained that Wayne and Stewart were too old for their roles. Critics also complained that the film looked studio bound. Later critics made much of the cynical newspaper publisher at the end of the movie who says "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Through the lens of 60's anti-heroism, these critics saw Ford's film as being about the debunking of all heroic American legends. Director John Ford knew exactly what he was doing. He eschewed the grand expanses of Monument Valley for the cramped back lot. He chose Wayne and Stewart because they were icons of the brave action hero and the law abiding community leader. He made these choices because he was making a stylized dirge to a frontier west where the code of facing your rival directly with a Colt .45 had given way to the complications of lawyers and lawbooks. After countless viewings of this movie, I am not so sure Ford was being all that cynical, either. At least not in the way the debunkers want to make him out to be. To me, the heart of this movie is an ultimate act of tragic romantic heroism and not cold political cynicism. The critics who focus on lawyer Stewart's physical confrontation with the villian, Libery Valance, and Stewart's later rise to political fame shortchange the second major conflict in the film. Can a cowardly act ever be courageous? For Liberty Valance also tells the story of a man of honor who loves a woman very, very much. And then, one day, she asks him to do that one thing that goes against his own moral code. He thought he was strong enough to live with it.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance |
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