The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) - film review

Senator Ransom Stoddard arrives in the small Midwest town of Shinbone to attend the funeral of a renowned local hobo, Tom Doniphon.  The newspaper editors are surprised by Stoddard’s presence and invite him to give an interview.  Stoddard relates how he came to meet Doniphon many years before and the important part he played in his future career.  Having just graduated from law school, the young Ransom Stoddard was a man of ideals who saw no necessity to carry a gun.  For him, the Wild West was a thing of the past and it was time for all American communities to come together and build a civilised law-abiding society.  Stoddard’s idealism was tested when his stagecoach was attacked by a ruthless outlaw named Liberty Valance.  Robbed and beaten by his attacker, Stoddard was taken to the nearest town, Shinbone, where he was cared for and offered work.  Stoddard’s protector, a man named Doniphon, warned him that his fine words and ideals were useless when dealing with men like Liberty Valance.  The only language that such bandits understand is that of the six-shooter...

John Ford’s last great western is one of his most popular, in spite of the fact that it is awash with clichés and, being shot mainly in the studio, lacks the epic quality and grand panoramic vistas of director’s earlier films.  The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is also one of Ford’s bleakest westerns, a sombre elegiac film which deconstructs the myth of the Old West, showing that America’s slow transition to a civilised law-abiding nation of unified states was far from easy, and far from painless.  

In his later films, John Wayne was often criticised for his characterless performances but here his inexpressive persona and apparent inability to emote in front of a camera are put to good use, allowing the actor to create a character that is both convincing as a man and also a potent symbol of the values and traditions of the Old West.   Equally, James Stewart is a perfect casting choice for the part of the naive lawyer Stoddard, although, with Stewart now in his early fifties, it takes some imagination to accept the actor as a fresh faced law graduate.  Lee Marvin’s Liberty Valance may be crude and heavily clichéd but somehow this O.T.T. portrayal of Old West villainy suits the film which is, after all, intended as an ironic reinterpretation of the western genre, not a straight rehash of what went before.  

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is impressive but it is by no means perfect.  Some of Ford’s trademark comedy sits ill alongside some of the film’s darker moments and most, if not all, of the supporting characters are little more than bland thumbnail sketches, so thinly drawn that they barely even register as caricatures.  Whilst it may not deserve the excessive praise that some reviewers lavish on it, the film is certainly one of Ford’s last great works, a solid, well-directed western that engages both the heart and the intellect.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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