This may be the saddest Western ever made, closer to an elegy than an action movie, and as cleanly beautiful as its central symbol, the cactus rose. The two heavyweights, Wayne and Stewart, are good together, with Wayne the embodiment of rugged individualism and Stewart the idealistic prophet of the civilization that will eventually tame the Wild West. Ford's nostalgia for the past is tempered by his stark approach, unusual for the visual poet of Stagecoach and The Searchers. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance opens with the return of Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles, as the generic love. Its so calm and self-modulated that it throws you off when things get. In the town's wide-open youth, two-fisted Westerner John Wayne and tenderfoot newcomer James Stewart clash over a woman (Vera Miles) but ultimately unite against the notorious outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' is a lot more understated than you might imagine, but I think thats where it succeeds.
In this late film from a long career, Ford looks at the civilizing of an Old West town, Shinbone, through the sad memories of settlers looking back. 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,' the New Yorkers Richard Brody writes, 'is the greatest American political movie.' He explains: 'The Western is intrinsically the most political movie genre, because, like Platos Republic, it is concerned with the founding of cities, and because it depicts the various abstract functions of government as.
When Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) returns home to Shinbone for the funeral of Tom. But in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance John Ford throws these two ideals side by side: toughness versus sensitivity, frontier.
"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." That's more than the code of a newspaperman in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance it's practically the operating credo of director John Ford, the most honored of American filmmakers. Date with the Duke: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).