Running Time. 2 hours 3 mins
Cast. Andy Devine, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles, Edmond O'Brien, James Stewart, John Wayne.
I had the immense pleasure of seeing The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance on the big screen at The Glasgow Film Theatre's 'Winds of Change: Cinema in '62' retrospective (part of the 2022 Glasgow Film Festival). As 2022 Glasgow Film Festival Co-Director, Allan Hunter remarked in his introduction, "1962 was a year of great change in cinema."
1962 is often said to be the last great year of black and white films - Lolita, Birdman Of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate, Mutiny On The Bounty and To Kill A Mockingbird. Yet, 1962 also saw the release of David Lean's Lawrence Of Arabia, Sam Peckinpah's Ride The High Country and the first cinematic appearance of James Bond, in Terence Young's Dr. No. Accompanying the inevitable decline of black and white films, many of cinema's early great directors were coming to the end of their careers in the early 1960s - Frank Capra directed his last film, Pocketful Of Miracles in 1961, as did Michael Curtiz, with The Comancheros.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance sees James Stewart as the young, naive, but principled attorney at law, Ransom Stoddard, and John Wayne as the no-nonsense cattle rancher, Tom Doniphon. Twenty-five years have passed, and (the now Senator) Stoddard returns to the town of Shinbone, where he recounts the legend of 'the man who shot Liberty Valance' to a local reporter.
John Ford chose to shoot The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in black and white on a soundstage. Whilst this decision undoubtedly reduced production costs and distanced the film from many of the director's Monument Valley classics, it also attempted to conceal the fact that both James Stewart and John Wayne were far too old to portray the lead roles.
There is a wonderful over the top performance from Edmond O'Brien, as Dutton Peabody, the editor of The Shinbone Star. But it is Vera Miles (as Hallie) who elevates a hitherto unremarkable performance to powerful, heart-wrenching proportions in one of the closing scenes, where a cactus rose is poignantly placed on top of a coffin. Yes, the three lead characters may have ultimately got what they wanted, but were any of them happy? Truly happy?
John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance can be viewed as a simple, straightforward romantic western. However, I like to believe that The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was John Ford's eulogy to the old West. The West of Horace Greeley. The West of Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine and The Searchers. The West of the film's most famous line, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
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