I was worried about how I would feel about another John Wayne/John Ford film after just coming off of The Magnificent Seven. Learning about the limitations placed on John Ford in order to get this film shot and the troubled relationship he had with John Wayne during the production made me appreciate what this film really was about, the end of era, in more ways than one.
Film #6 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production.
We meet Senator Ranse Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) as they arrive by train to the small town of Shinbone. Their visit is kept secret by Ranse but a young local reporter finds out about it. They follow Ranse to the undertaker and find out he is there to oversee the funeral of Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). When the press admits to never having heard the name of Tom Doniphon, they demand that Ranse tell them who he is. Ranse then tells them a story that took place twenty five years prior. The film then goes back to that time when Ranse was a younger lawyer looking to bring law to the frontier and how immediately his stagecoach gets robbed by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), who introduces him to the 'law of the west'. Battered, Ranse ends up in the care of a husband and wife who run a restaurant with a younger Hallie working there as well. Ranse meets Tom, a man who also understands and lives by the law of the west, who is trying to court Hallie and sees Rance as a bit of fool for wanting to use books and not guns to enforce the law.
As we know from the beginning of the film, Ranse makes it out of his collision course with Liberty Valance and ends up married to Hallie. What we don't know is how that all went down and how Tom factors into it. It doesn't quite go the way you expect, and I respect this film all the more for it.
Ranse arrives at a pivotal time in this (unnamed) territory's history. It is on the verge of a vote to send delegates to the territory capital city in order to send two men to DC to apply for statehood. The locals want the protections and guarantees of what becoming a state would mean, but others (mainly ranchers and men like Liberty Valance) want to keep the area a territory as there would be less accountability and oversight of their actions. So enters a lawyer who wants to teach everyone how to read, to write, and how law and order works at a time when many are trying to keep everything the way it was because it suits them just fine.
At a few different points Ranse is challenged about his beliefs that using the rule of law should lead to Liberty Valance being arrested but no one (including the well meaning but completely spineless Marshall Link Appleyard played by Andy Devine) will do it. The only person not afraid of him is Tom but unless Liberty is directly in his path, he doesn't care about what he does or doesn't do.
Here is a scene that establishes the three main leads and their motivation. Lee Marvin's Liberty Valance has just forced his way into the restaurant that Ranse is helping out at and has just bullied away people at a table he wanted.
Liberty is the typical cruel old west villain here, tripping Ranse and causing him to drop the steak on the floor that Tom had ordered. Liberty forcing Ranse to pick up the steak is show of power that Tom is going to have none of. He gets into a stand off with Liberty, demanding that he pick up the steak and not Ranse. As both men posture and show the room who is the tougher man, Ranse picks the steak up out of frustration. He knows how ridiculous it is to have pissing contest over a fallen steak and wants everyone else to see how petty it is too.
Rance eventually realizes that he has to take up a gun in order to deal with Liberty. Problem is that he isn't very good with it and everyone knows he will likely be killed if he stays. Rance knows if he runs that all his talk about the law and doing what's right will have been for naught and Shinbone will fall to fear and not move forward like they want to.
This leads to a really powerful scene where the clearly outmatched Ranse faces offer against Liberty in a darkened street. Toying with him, Liberty shoots some pottery by Ranse's head and then hits him in the right arm so he is not able to shoot (however ever poorly) with his good hand. Liberty is laughing at Ranse as he is slow to to grab the gun with his free hand while his other has blood spilling over his fingers. Then, Liberty is shot dead and the town sees Ranse standing and holding his gun.
Now the hero, he is tended by Hallie who kisses his forehead to show she loves him. Tom sees this and heads to the bar to get drunk and spiral out of control. He tosses one of Liberty's remaining men outside and yells at the Marshall to do his job with the other of Liberty's men. The entire saloon is shocked to see Tom so angry and distraught and mainly get out of his way.
He loved Hallie and was adding a new room to his home for her when they got married (as everyone, but Hallie, assumed). Tom goes into his home, chucks a lit lantern into the new room and just sits in his chair as the place is engulfed in flames. A friend of his rushes in to save him at the last minute.
Rance goes to the capitol city of the territory for the political meeting to determine who goes to DC to apply for statehood. Rance is nominated but the opposition is accusing him of ignoring the law when he shot Liberty. Rance quickly exits and runs into Tom. Tom, who clearly doesn't like Rance because he won Hallie's heart, tells him what really happened that night with the showdown. Tom shot him with rifle at range but out of sight of the rest of the townsfolk. He knew that Rance had to be the one to be seen to ending it.
After learning the truth, Rance goes back into the meeting to accept the nomination and cement his future as a successful politician and governor. Tom's story is never really known except that he died with the truth only a few knew.
Once Rance's tale is over, the news story is ripped up. "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
Liberty being shot ended the Old West. Rance moving forward with statehood was the start of a new age. Tom knew this but also knew that he was part of the Old West and without Hallie, he didn't really have a place in the new age. As much as it destroyed him, he knew it was the right thing to do.
The placing of the cactus in bloom on Tom's coffin is a sad and proper sight. It showed Rance that Hallie will care about Tom even though she chose him.
I didn't want to go that much into the plot but it felt important as it was the only way to get across how I feel about the film. Knowing that John Ford said that he preferred to make this in black and white and on soundstages because it was 'real photography' but understanding the reality that the studio didn't want to give him the money to shoot on color film or on location in Monument Valley, of course he would want to print the legend of John Ford, The Western Film Maker, and not the truth of a studio not trusting an aging talent that was getting bored with the film making process.
Jimmy Stewart was good in the film. I was worried that his particular way delivering lines would conflict with John Wayne's delivery but it worked out okay. The times they did interact together were quite good. Seeing Steward one punch Wayne to the ground was a surprise and Wayne's look of confusion that gave way to respect was a nice touch.
John Wayne's performance was yet another shade different that The Searchers and Rio Bravo. He played defeated very well in the last portion when he knew he lost Hallie. It's not the same brokenness as The Searchers's Ethan, but he was heartbroken.
Lee Marvin as Liberty Valance was great. He was a monster with his bullwhip and how he would keep swinging it against his target until his men stopped him was scary.
I liked this film a lot more than The Searchers. I will give the former its due to the beauty of the landscapes and the challenging character John Wayne played in it. What makes this one better is the stronger story and the long look at what happens to those when a secret is kept, even for the greater good.
Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):
- Weird gang member names? Liberty is a weird one. Weirder still is Major Cassius Starbuckle (played by John Carradine). It makes me want to order a Venti Cassius Latte at Starbuckles.
- Beautiful landscapes? None. None whatsoever. It works in this film's favor as it does feel like Shinbone is a cramped town that is ready to burst with growth.
- Odd musical cue's early in the film to denote whimsical comedy? No, and it feels like that particular aural oddity is working itself out as we move through the years.
- Does a building catch fire? Yes, the above mentioned scene with John Wayne setting fire to his own home is devastating.
- How many Ernest Borgnines? None, but one of the Liberty's gang members is Lee Van Cleef, who I can't wait to see in some of the later films on this list.
- Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? Yes and no. A song was written and released but it was not in the film. Evidently, halfway through the song's production, the studio released the film, so the song does not appear in the film. It is a lovely song and may have been a bigger hit at the time than the film itself.
Rating:
4.25 tin stars out of 5. It would feel odd rating this the same as The Searchers when I enjoyed it more than that film. It is a great film with a great story that makes you question what you know about your heroes. It showed that the Old West had to end and give way to modern society and this film very much showed that it had to give way to a more sophisticated western.
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