The Man who shot Liberty Valance

John Ford’s autumnal western is a surprisingly dark study of the limitations of the masculine values that have underpinned his oeuvre of western film. James Stewart plays an Eastern lawyer, Ransom Stottard, who arrives in a small western town determined to espouse the rule of law not the rule of the gun. But the town is being menaced by a sadistic mob of bandits, led by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), who are being bankrolled by rich cattle merchants who are opposed to statehood and any ensuing limitations to their claim for land. Stottard’s belief in the calm rules of his legal profession is opposed to Tom Doniphon’s (John Wayne) belief that only a gun can stop Liberty’s harassment of the townspeople. Culminating in a breathtaking shoot-out at night, “The Man who shot Liberty Valance” stands as one of Ford’s most eloquent films, one in which the rugged individualist ethos that he celebrated in “Stagecoach” and “She wore a yellow ribbon” are shown to be in perpetual conflict with the democratic demands of nationhood. The performances by Wayne and Stewart are amongst those performers’ best, and they are ably supported by Vera Miles, Strother Martin (in one of the few African-American representations depicted in the classical Western genre), Lee Marvin, and in a small but cruelly effective role, by Lee Van Cleef