The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) is treated as John Ford's last word on the western, and it is about how the genre manufactures its own legends. Senator Ransom Stoddard returns to the town of Shinbone years later for a funeral. The dead man is someone nobody remembers. When reporters ask why a senator has come, Stoddard begins telling the whole story. We go back. He arrived as a young lawyer, was beaten by an outlaw named Liberty Valance, and tried to answer with law rather than a gun. The town did not take him seriously. Then one night they met in the street and Valance died. Stoddard built his entire political career on that event. The idea of the film is that the story the career rests on is not true, and everyone learns this at some point. The printed story does not change. Ford deliberately shot in black and white on a studio set. By 1962 westerns were in colour and on location; the choice makes the film feel like a memory rather than a landscape. The town looks like a set because what is being told is also a construction. John Wayne and James Stewart are both far too old for the ages they play in the flashback, and that was not corrected either. It runs 123 minutes. Good for: classic westerns, John Ford, and films that think about their own genre. Less good for: the pace is slow, there is little action, and the studio look reads as artificial to some viewers.