Standing Up For Liberty Valance
An exclusive analysis of John Ford’s next-to-last Western by Kevin Costner.
By: Henry Cabot Beck 04/01/2009
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) is the last truly important movie in the career of director John Ford.
As Liberty Valance begins, the period we see in the film is roughly the same time that Ford first began making Westerns, in the second decade of the 20th century. But the bulk of the story is a flashback that takes us to the 1870’s, when most of the great Westerns, including Ford’s, take place.
The flashback is a re-telling of events leading up to the defining moment in the life of an Eastern tenderfoot, Ransom Stoddard (played by James Stewart), who arrived by stagecoach in Horace Greeley’s West with a carpetbag full of law books and untested principles. Immediately upon his arrival, Stoddard is beaten to within an inch of his life by one gunfighter, Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), and then rescued by another.
The picture never establishes an exact state, but we do learn the town is called Shinbone and that the majority of citizens who live here are launching a fight for statehood against the wishes of the cattle barons who first settled the place. Stoddard has arrived at a key moment. Although his legal expertise is valuable, we can see that law books don’t mean much when he’s eventually forced to face Valance in a fight to the death.
That showdown, and Valance’s death, pushed the lawyer into prominence, making it possible for Stoddard to revisit Shinbone decades later, as a three-term governor and two-term senator.
We meet Stoddard and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) as they arrive by train to honor the death of Tom Doniphon, an unseen figure laid out in a pine box who has but a single mourner.
When the editor of the local paper gets wind of the arrival of Sen. Stoddard, he forces an audience, demanding to know why so prominent a figure would travel so far to honor a man who nobody but a handful of the local old timers knew. With a nod of encouragement from his wife, Stoddard decides to give them what they want, and maybe a little bit more.
The film is often described as a Mystery, but that’s inaccurate. What this Western has is a key plot twist that changes the established facts of Stoddard’s life, and the late Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) is at the core of it all.
Ford’s frequent collaborations with John Wayne—The Searchers, Stagecoach, the cavalry trilogy—are defining moments for Wayne, Ford and the Western in general, which is why Liberty Valance, so late in his career and his next-to-last Western before Cheyenne Autumn, is so crucial.
A line in the picture gets quoted often, even by those who have never seen the movie. When Stoddard finishes telling the Shinbone paper the actual truth about Liberty Valance’s death, the editor tears the story in half and throws it into the stove. “This is the West, sir,” he says. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
As an audience, we’re left wondering whether Ford is either justifying, or criticizing, an entire lifetime spent building our idea of the West. After years of wondering about Ford’s feelings on the subject, we’re left without an answer. What’s clear is that Liberty Valance is a bittersweet look at the West, and that the film raises as many questions as it answers.
The picture is also tremendously affecting and entertaining, which isn’t surprising since all of Ford’s considerable skills as a filmmaker went into it.
Comments (4)
The Costner interview was great but still I felt that some parts were missing.
Doniphan and Valance are Titans and symbols. John Wayne and Lee Marvin are powerful screen personae that eclipse the fact that their two characters are one dimensional.
Doniphan is the romantic western vision that even John Wayne was shedding at the time.
Valance is a ruthless and almost mindless tyrant and a front for nefarious (unspecified) corparate interests. He seems to represent unrestrained liberty hence his name. Lee Marvin was born for this part and IMHO no modern screen actor could play Liberty.
Stoddard's role I think is to keep these two forces from confronting each other because a victory by either one would destroy any hope of progress. The conflict over the steak brings this to a boiling point. Jimmmy Stewart's earlier career (It's a Wonderful LIfe, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) reflect the idea of reason and good will as the way to construct a future society. As the article pointed there weren't any younger actors around Hollywood with the gravitas for the part
A victory by Doniphan would probably led to a stagnant, reactionary west mired in romanticism. He does not notice that Halley is illiterate. She would only be another piece of furniture for his whitewashed cottage dream.
The story hinges, I believe, on the gunfight and introduces moral ambiguity.
Doniphon shoots Valance unseeen from the shadows (essentially shooting Liberty in the back) violating every canon of the western movie genre. Doniphon's decline is inevitable after this.
I would like to point to three other actors in this film who weren't mentioned in the Costner interview.
Burgess Meredith, as the newspaper editor who says,"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend" which is an underlying theme.
John Carradine as the attorney at the statehood convention whose verbal attack on Stoddard leads to the unwinding on the secret. Carrradine's role seems like a cliche but Carradine wrote the roles that would become cliches.
Woody Strode as Pompey. It's sad to think that if Strode's career had come twenty years later he would have been recognized as a great Black film star with such as James Earl Jones and Denzel Washington, a universal actor.
The Costner interview by Beck and Costner's observations were classic. I've re-read it several times. I believe "formidable" and proper actor selection in a role to insure "formidability" recalls the movie "A Few Good Men". There was real concern in casting Tom Cruise to go up against Jack Nicholson in the court room scene. Could Cruise stand up to Nicholson? (He did in spades) How much better to consider this while casting rather to have it considered by critics after the movie is released.
Doug McLeod
Liberty Valance is my most favorite western movie of all time - I saw it at the drive in with my parents when I was nine years old! Jimmy Stewart was 54 years old when he played Ransom Stoddard? I never knew that he was not as young as he depicted in the film. Which means that Stewart is the supreme actor that he was. Bravo! Speaking of age depiction in movies, I really hate it when a film is made of a book where the book character seems older and then a younger actor is cast for that part probably because of sheer sex appeal for a younger audience. I really hate that. But westerns always seem to me to be created with the right actors for the job. I especially like the movie, Dances With Wolves, because the film gets deep into the humanity of all races, showing that Indians as well as whites have positive and negative characteristics. No one is more evil than anyone else.
"You see these Ricky Nelsons and The Sons of Katie Elder, these guys, they’re not formidable young guys."
I don't know about that, Kevin. I think Nelson was pretty formidable as Colorado. I believed him, believed Colorado was every bit as smart, competent and dangerous-when-he-needed-to-be-dangerous as the character--clearly based on Billy Bonney--was supposed to be.
Nelson's acting chops weren't the best but he WAS charismatic, and I suspect charisma (or lack of it) has a lot to do with an actor's "formidability" quotient.
What you're really talking about here is Alpha males vs. non-Alphas, I think, and I'm convinced that no matter how skilled an actor is, no degree of acting chops will turn a non-Alpha into an Alpha convincingly. Alphas are by definition charismatic, and how do you "act" charisma? You either got it or you don't...
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