The Man That Shot Liverty Valance

HUGE

There are certain magical films, where the process is akin to alchemy, or at the very least poetry.  "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance" is a poem, of the equal of any of the great modern scribes.  John Ford was a power house director, a conscientious and sympathetic artist who used a gruff exterior and called himself a journeyman director for hire, to try to keep in touch with his working class roots.  It's safe to say he hated pretension and was at his least effective when he allowed himself to get too bawdy, too much saloon humor.  But, in the case of this movie he was at his best; a sprawling epic that covers the conquering of the wild west, to the establishment of a great country; but somehow is as light and nimble and as easy to watch as film with far less power.  This film has an indescribable depth to it, the characters are sympathetic and flawed, beautiful human sketches.  I am always completely humbled by the fact that Ford was not young when he made this film, he had really enjoyed his greatest successes and was classed as a "has been", an old timer, and was having a harder and harder time of staying employed-- with this in mind it would have been wise and probably safe to have borrowed from his past successes, pilfered a cliché here, an effective scene or action moment there, Ford was guilty of this with other movies.  But, "Valance" stands completely alone, and is the master work of a veteran film director, a man that understood intimately the sadness of the passing of the west, but also comprehended the coming of civilization with all of it's bureaucracy and nit-picking.  Have you ever seen an antagonist as thoughtfully drawn as Liberty Valance; Lee Marvin is poetry in motion, we know what makes him tick, he's supremely awful but an understandable product of that environment.  Playing type against two of the West's supreme good guys, Wayne and Stewart.  Think about it, John Wayne shoots the bad guy in the back, and takes no credit for it.  This is a film full of real emotions.  The good scene where John Wayne humiliates James Stewart while pretending to teach him to shoot is just knock-out, mean spirited and bullyish, incomprehensibly, you love the duke even more for it (incidentally the special effects in this movie are terrific for the period, those gunshots look like real bullets).  I love this movie but feel unqualified to even write about it, but I do because it might convince one or two others to enjoy it.  "The man who shot Liberty Valance" is a beautiful, tragic, but inspiring film that truly feels like it was made by men who had been there and done it.
John Wayne gets neither the girl or the credit for killing the title character, but never loses his pride or subjugates himself, this is pure film-making of the highest order, the poignancy creeps up on you after the film is over;  "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend..."
A light weight watch, with great depth and relevance beyond it's first impression.  A qualified master work.