In a directorial career that included almost 150 movies, John Ford was at the forefront of the great American western, presenting a lawless land of moustached bandits, swinging saloon doors and twilight duels. Ford was a creator of legend and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, one of the director’s final films, explores the genre he helped create.
The film begins at the end. James Stewart stars as Ransom Stoddard, a senator returning to Shinbone. Once a lawless town, this is where Stoddard got his start. He’s back for the funeral of an old friend; he’s back to tell the story of a legend.
Through flashback, we learn of how the once wimpy Stoddard came to Shinbone as a young lawyer. He means to use books and legal jargon to bring civility to the town. He doesn’t understand, though how things work. The gun is more powerful than any hardcover text; raw strength is still more important than knowledge.
The town’s unofficial leader is Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), a roughneck cowboy with deadeye aim and the respect of those around him. He lacks apparent emotion, straight-lining through life and proving himself with a stern lift of the eyebrow or a choice showing at sharp-shooting.
The people of Shinbone are terrorized by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and his band of cronies. Essentially, they’re stock bullies, the kind you find on a schoolyard playground. Consciences and reason are for the weak. To them, harassment is pleasure.
As a child of the post-Western era, I was never a fan of the genre. As a child, their stark imagery and lack of cars bored me. As a teenager, they didn’t provide me with the necessary explosions and action. And today, most Westerns just don’t seem relevant. Not true with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. This is a film about legend – one of the foundations that great storytelling is built upon. The more time goes by, the greater a legend grows.
Many of the timeless legends that have been passed from generation to generation involve a single event: David slaying Goliath, the Trojan Horse and, more recently, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There is no secret about this film’s climactic event. The outcome is predicted by the title. The fallout of this event created the legend. However, legends often get misconstrued. They grow and distort as time goes on. The actual event is often not the same as what the legend tells us.
As a western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is everything I didn’t like as a child after the genre’s heyday. Still, this film stands out because it is timeless. If the story were true, it surely would not have been this exciting and that’s exactly what Ford set out to show us. To quote the film, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
