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Jun 23, 2023 · The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has become a memorable entry in the Western film canon, recognized for its nuanced exploration of moral ambiguity. It challenges traditional notions of right and wrong, leaving the audience to ponder the complexities of justice.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (/ ˈ v æ l ə n s /) is a 1962 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and James Stewart. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a 1953 short story written by Dorothy M. Johnson.
Dec 28, 2011 · Liberty Valance cannot abide anyone standing up to him, and the shingle is an affront. Valance gives him a choice: Leave town, or face him in a shootout on Main Street. Keeping to one side, Tom Doniphon observes everything but is slow to act; his strength is silently coiled.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. John Ford deliberately shot this film on soundstages in an effort to distance it from his Monument Valley epics. John Ford had considered casting a young actor as Stoddard, but feared that would highlight the fact that John Wayne was too old to play Doniphon.
- Overview
- Production notes and credits
- Cast
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, American western film, released in 1962, that was John Ford’s poetic and sombre look at the end of the Wild West era. Although atypical of his usual works, it is widely considered Ford’s last great movie and among his best westerns.
The story opens with the return of elderly U.S. Sen. Ransom Stoddard (played by James Stewart) and his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles), to their small hometown of Shinbone in the American West. They are there to pay their respects to their old friend Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), who is being buried in a pauper’s grave. Stoddard, who rode to fame as a tenderfoot lawyer credited with having fatally shot the notorious gunman Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), makes a startling confession to local newspaper reporters. In a tale told in flashback, he relates how he arrived in Shinbone hoping to establish a law office but found the town terrorized by Valance and his gang. Although Stoddard was meek in nature, Valance’s continued harassment of him resulted in an impromptu showdown in which Valance was shot dead. Stoddard thus became a local legend, and he was subsequently elected to the U.S. Senate. However, he confesses to the local reporters that he had learned years ago that it was Doniphon who actually fired the fatal shot at Valance and later allowed Stoddard to be credited with the deed. Despite his confession, Stoddard finds the press uninterested in publishing the revelation, preferring instead to let his myth remain unaffected. As one journalist says—in the film’s famous tagline— “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
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•Studio: Paramount Pictures
•Director: John Ford
•Producer: Willis Goldbeck
•Writers: James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck
•Music: Cyril Mockridge
•Running time: 123 minutes
•James Stewart (Ransom Stoddard)
•John Wayne (Tom Doniphon)
•Vera Miles (Hallie Stoddard)
•Lee Marvin (Liberty Valance)
- Lee Pfeiffer
Feb 7, 2023 · The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is very-late-period John Ford, and the changes in shooting styles, production logistics, and public taste emerging in the early ‘60s all chip away at the film throughout—so relentlessly that it almost doesn’t survive the onslaught.
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Outside of the town, the stagecoach holding the novice attorney-at-law Ransom was stopped by sudden rifle gun-blasts - it was surrounded by the gang of a tyrannical and ruthless masked outlaw, ironically named Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin).
