Target #234: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, John Ford)

TSPDT placing: #85

Directed by: John Ford

Written by: Dorothy M. Johnson (short story), James Warner Bellah (screenplay), Willis Goldbeck (screenplay)

Starring: John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmond O'Brien, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Jeanette Nolan, John Qualen, Woody Strode, Strother Martin, Lee Van Cleef

WARNING: Plot and/or ending details may follow!!! [Paragraphs 3 + 4 Only]

A Western like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) could only have been produced by a man reaching the twilight of his career. Suddenly, all those gunfights, bar brawls and romantic quarrels, to be found in abundance in John Ford's previous efforts, don't seem quite so exciting anymore, and all we're left with is the lingering melancholy of nostalgia, the memory of wasted years and missed opportunities. Many critics say that Ford reached full maturity with The Searchers (1956), the powerful tale of a cowboy plagued with guilt and racial prejudice. However, even that film required a lighthearted romantic subplot to break up the drama, a typical Ford inclusion that rather thinned the emotional intensity of the primary narrative. Liberty Valance offends similarly – Edmond O'Brien's drunkenness and Andy Devine's cowardice are clearly played for laughs – but this does little to detract from the story at the film's heart, a wistful reminiscence of the Old West, before it became civilised, and the untruths that helped build the core of the Western legend.

John Wayne and James Stewart were, of course, no strangers to the Western genre. Their casting, aside from adding commercial appeal to the picture, was made with a very deliberate intention in mind – after years of defining these two actors' Western identities, Ford would then systematically break them down, to reveal the bitter truths about life, love and death in the Old West. But, in a way, Ford seems to prefer the "uncivilised" and "lawless" lands prior to the arrival of the educated man – we watch with disdain as a fast-talking politician (John Carradine) carelessly spouts lies to add dramatic effect to his speech, and refers to Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) as "the bullet-ridden body of an honest citizen." Just how did the scholarly law-man, who arrives in town without a gun, manage to conquer the West, to defeat the likes of Liberty Valance? The truth is that he could only have done it with the aid of true men like Tom Doniphon (Wayne), who compromised their values and later lived to regret it.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance comes at the cross-roads of a radical transformation in the Western genre. That same year, young director Sam Peckinpah released Ride the High Country (1962), a key landmark in the development of the Revisionist Western, a subgenre that critiqued the idealistic themes of the traditional Western, and favoured realism of romanticism. Ford's film is wholly traditional in terms of film-making style, with the majority of filming taking place on studio sets rather than on location. This decision, a departure from the director's other famous Westerns (which often made excellent use of Monument Valley, Arizona) was made to stress the film's greater emphasis on characters. At the same time, however, Liberty Valance is a reflection on the fallacy of Ford's Old West, a mournful footnote to decades of the director's work. Here, the villain isn't killed in a fair fight, but he's gunned down from the shadows; the hero doesn't win the girl, but dies lonely. In fact, I'm not even sure there are heroes in this story. Only legends.

This is, without a doubt, one of Ford's saddest Westerns; rather than looking towards the future with hope, its characters are instead looking back with wistful regret. The West, which was once a wilderness, has been transformed into a garden, and a well-meaning politician has built a career upon an act that he can't claim to be his own. Wayne's Tom Doniphon perhaps comes closer to heroism than any other character, but he shot his foe, unseen, from a side-street, and thus his reward is not the respect and admiration of a nation, nor the love of the girl (Vera Miles) whom he adores. Instead, the courageous but foolish educated man, Ransom Stoddard (Stewart) reaped the benefits of his "achievement," and his life is forever tinged with the guilt of his own success. We can almost see Stoddard's conscience tearing itself apart when the railway conductor good-naturedly quips, "nothing's too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance." Perhaps Stoddard did shoot Liberty Valance. The legends tell us that this is the case, and so now the truth, whatever it may be, doesn't make an ounce of difference.

9/10

Currently my #6 film of 1962:

1) Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
2) La Jetée {The Pier} (Chris Marker)
3) Le Procès {The Trial} (Orson Welles)
4) To Kill A Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan)
5) Birdman of Alcatraz (John Frankenheimer)
6) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
7) Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson)
8) The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
9) Dr. No (Terence Young)
10) Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah)

What others have said:

"The contrast between charismatic and legal authority in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is even more interesting, because it parallels the difference between the values of the West or Wilderness (John Wayne) and the values of the East or Civilization (James Stewart). Stewart's Ranse Stoddard embodies rational-legal authority, symbolically as well as practically. A decent lawyer from the East, he comes to practice law and bring order to the West. Wayne, by contrast, is the uneducated leader who believes that "You make your own justice here and enforce your law." He is the rugged individual, using physical force, not laws, in fighting Liberty Valance, an outlaw, because it is the only efficient way."

Emanuel Levy

"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a drama that shreds the fabric of legend, as well as man's need to cling to simplified, inspirational stories that separate good from evil. The film examines how the truth of history is always obscured by hearsay, assumptions and outright deception, and observes how legends rise from the ashes of grit and pain.... The crux of the film involves Stoddard's own showdown with Valance, and a secret surrounding the specifics of what exactly went down. Doniphon shows true heroism by putting aside his own interests for the common good. Of course, the purpose of the movie is to explain that ideas and spirit mean a whole lot more than facts. Ideas and symbols are more powerful than bullets."

Phil Villarreal, 2006

"But I can't get all misty eyed over Ford's legendary take on the Old West and his attempt to show that the greatness of the country came from those heroic roots, as he dismisses in importance whether all the stories are true or not and how short memories are for Americans. The way Ford sees it Stewart had the vision what America should be like, but if it wasn't for Wayne's gun that vision would never have happened. I found this history lesson less than genuine and far too simplistic and chilling, even though the film had some value as entertainment fodder."

Dennis Schwartz, 2003

Also recommended from director John Ford:

* Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
"When production of Drums Along the Mohawk began to run behind schedule and over-budget, producer Darryl F. Zanuck, knowing that a great battle had yet to be filmed, became understandably anxious.... Ford decided to abandon the entire sequence; placing Fonda in front of the camera, he gently put forth a succession of questions concerning the conflict, and the actor improvised from there... In a deliberate, deadpan tone of voice, Fonda recounts the horrors of skirmish; the horror of comrades falling beside him; the terrifying war-cry of the enemy; the appalling waste of life. This was the slice of Ford genius for which I had been waiting."

* The Fugitive (1947)
"Unlike many of the Westerns that brought director John Ford his greatest fame, The Fugitive is entirely unconcerned with any form of action or dialogue; Ford's film-making is so concentrated on establishing the correct emotional atmosphere for each scene that it occasionally strays into tedium. However, it was obviously a very personal project for the Ford – who once called it "perfect" – and it's difficult to criticise a film into which the director poured so much passion and resolve.... A visual masterpiece this film may be, and certainly an overall interesting watch, but The Fugitive remains inferior Ford."

* Fort Apache (1948)

"Prior to this film, I'd always seen Henry Fonda as a decent and honourable everyman, so it was interesting to see him depart from his usual upright persona. Conceited and stubborn, Lt. Colonel Thursday is a tragic pillar of eroded military integrity, his once-impressive leadership abilities now overshadowed by an unyielding desire for immortality; the young men whose lives he sacrificed in order to imprint himself in history's pages will never be remembered by name, but, as Capt. York muses at the film's conclusion, their spirit will forever live on in the plight of their successors."

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Repeat Viewing: Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)

TSPDT placing: #30
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Written by: Robert Bloch (novel), Joseph Stefano (screenplay)
Starring: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire

WARNING: Plot and/or ending details may follow!!!

June, 1960. The movie theatre is quiet; 45 minutes ago, the halls were buzzing with movement and anticipation, but not anymore. Nobody has been allowed into the cinema since the picture began, and the audience is dead quiet. Through the walls of the theatre, one can hear the muffled whirr of running water. Silence. A indistinct shadow is seen approaching through the curtain. Accompanied by the fierce screech of violins, hundreds of voices suddenly utter a deafening chorus of horrified shock and surprise; some patrons collapse into the aisle. Bernard Hermann continues to pound the violin with extraordinary intensity, and a bloody streak carves its path towards the drainpipe. Audience members reel with a frantic mixture of stunned confusion and gripping fear. The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, has just painted the most extraordinary masterstroke of his distinguished career. The simple act of taking a shower will never again be the same.

Though he produced many films that could justifiably be considered masterpieces, it is unlikely that Hitchcock ever directed anything more popular and influential than Psycho (1960). The first of only two Hitchcock horror films, it shocked many with its unique narrative structure, and the infamous "shower scene" has become permanently imprinted in the movie-going public's collective memory. Hitchcock allegedly produced the film in order to reclaim his designation as "The Master of Suspense," as he considered Frenchman Henri-Georges Clouzot to have temporarily seized the title with The Wages of Fear (1953) and especially Les Diaboliques (1955). Interestingly, the latter film has a particularly alarming bathtub sequence, and perhaps Psycho was the film through which Hitchcock was able to respond to (and improve upon) the achievements of his chief rival. Gone are the larger-than-life artistic flourishes of Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959) – this is the Master of Suspense at his leanest and meanest, a film completely stripped of its spectacle and lowered into the unfathomable depths of the disturbed human mind.

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Adapted by Joseph Stefano from Robert Bloch's 1959 novel, Psycho opens with the character of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a real-estate secretary who impulsively steals $40,000 from her boss and flees in the direction of her California boyfriend. Her cross-country flight ultimately leads her to the Bates Motel, managed by the awkward and mild-mannered Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), a man who submits loyally to the wishes of his mentally-ill, domineering mother. Meanwhile, Marion's boyfriend Sam Loomis (John Gavin) and sister Lila (Vera Miles) set out in pursuit, their search ending – inevitably – at the Bates motel. The story sporadically shifts from one character to the other; after convincing audiences that Marion Crane is "the wrong man" of so many of his previous pictures, Hitchcock deftly strikes at the heart of their sympathies. In his early film Sabotage (1936), the director had condemned his own decision to murder a character with whom the viewer had been asked to identify, though here he once again dared to break his own rules, and we've never forgotten it.

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Paramount was so aghast at the story's graphic subject matter, labelling it "too repulsive," that Hitchcock's budget was severely restricted, and the director was forced to finance the film through his own Shamley Productions. These budget limitations proved crucial in developing the unforgettable atmosphere, and were a major factor in his decision to film is black-and-white (which he also did to avoid incurring the wrath of the censors). Though Psycho received a mixed critical response upon its release, its commercial success was extraordinary, and film-goers lined entire city blocks to experience the director's latest. Conversely, fellow British director Michael Powell's thematically-similar Peeping Tom (1960) had been severely trashed by critics and audiences alike just months earlier, and the career of the beloved filmmaker was, for all practical purposes, left in ruins. Furthermore, the success of Psycho triggered the emergence of the "slasher" flick, and subsequent years saw a slew of inferior, gory and imaginatively-titled knock-offs, such as Maniac (1963), Paranoic (1963) and Fanatic (1965).

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Though discussions of Psycho rarely stray from the film's more disturbing moments, it's interesting to consider the various crucial scenes of human interaction. Marion's supper with Norman in the parlour room, surrounded by the seemingly-passive but strangely-threatening stuffed birds, is a masterpiece of nervous tension, awkwardness, and the tiny inflections of human speech that communicate more than mere words ever could. Anthony Perkins plays the role of Norman Bates to quirky perfection, and his character {perhaps modelled from Dennis Weaver's jittery hotel night manager in Touch of Evil (1958) – also starring Janet Leigh} is a man who initially demands our pity and understanding. Even after the atrocity in the shower, Hitchcock, as he also did in Frenzy (1972), builds a suspense sequence around a villain's attempts to conceal the traces of his crime. Martin Balsam is rarely mentioned when discussing the film, but his characterisation of detective Milton Arbogast is letter-perfect, his shrewd but amenable tone successfully lulling Norman into a false sense of triumph, and yet the audience knows full well that the experienced investigator sees the transparency of his lies.

Despite the prevalence of cultural spoofs and references, Psycho is a thriller that still holds up exceptionally well, even though most viewers are fully-aware of the first major twist. When I first watched the film several years ago, I was completely ignorant of Mother's true identity, and I gasped aloud at the revelation in the fruit cellar, the swinging lightbulb casting a shifting luminance on the rotting corpse of Norma Bates, as Bernard Herrmann's intense, imaginative and very memorable musical score screeches in the background. Few moments in cinema have succeeded in giving me the same icy chill as the image of Norman in the prison cell, consumed by the mental consciousness of his overbearing mother, and that sinister smile that fades subliminally into the decaying shadow of a human skull. Norman Bates will continue to live on in my nightmares.
10/10

Currently my #1 film of 1960:
1) Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
2) The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
3) Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
4) Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer)
5) The Time Machine (George Pal)

Currently my #1 film from director Alfred Hitchcock:
1) Psycho (1960)
2) Strangers On A Train (1951)
3) Vertigo (1958)
4) Rear Window (1954)
5) Rope (1948)
6) Rebecca (1940)
7) North by Northwest (1959)
8) I Confess (1953)
9) The Lady Vanishes (1938)
10) Spellbound (1945)

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Target #179: The Searchers (1956, John Ford)

TSPDT placing: #7
Directed by: John Ford
Written by: Alan Le May (novel), Frank S. Nugent (screenplay)
Starring: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, Hank Worden, Henry Brandon, John Qualen, Olive Carey, Ken Curtis

At first glance, I almost dismissed The Searchers (1956) as being a standard-type “cowboys and Indians” adventure film, albeit a very good one. When Comanche Indians brutally murder his brother and sister-in-law, and kidnap their two daughters, heroic drifter Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) sets out in pursuit, not only to rescue his nieces but also to exact revenge on the American Indians responsible, namely a formidable leader named Scar. Shot in 35mm VistaVision, the film must surely have been a spectacle on the big screen, with cinematographer Winton C. Hoch perfectly capturing the vast expanse of the American desert, and the towering, dominant landscapes of Monument Valley, Utah {though the film is primarily set in the Llano Estacado region of Texas}. Many of the picture’s most memorable moments arise from the confrontations between the two clashing American cultures – a vulnerable family, through various subtle hints and images, sense an unseen foe circling their home; a search-party of Texan settlers suddenly find themselves surrounded by dozens of Indians on horseback. Taken just on face-value, The Searchers remains a highly-accomplished piece of filmmaking.

However, with the legendary John Ford at the helm, it’s apparent that there must be something more to the film. Indeed, I was astonished by the performance of John Wayne, who brings an incredible complexity and moral ambiguity to his character. Ethan Edwards boasts an overwhelming racial prejudice towards the Comanche Indians. Having lost his own mother to the native tribes {as can be briefly glimpsed from a seemingly-inconsequential tombstone prop}, and now the woman that he conceivably loved himself, Ethan’s prejudice is undying, and his commitment to attaining retribution unflinching. Young Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), throughout the arduous adventure, proves his most loyal companion, though, being one-eighth Cherokee, it takes the best part of five years before Ethan treats him with the respect he deserves. Though it stops short of humanising the Comanche Indians, the film makes clear the startling parallels between Ethan and Scar; our hero’s racist attitudes are not merely a product of their time, but rather Ford both acknowledges and condemns his prejudicial mind-set. Ethan remains the film’s unrivalled hero, but the audience is nonetheless offered a conflicting perspective on his morals and motivations.

Intertwined within this darkly-themed tale of obsession and prejudice is a somewhat awkwardly-placed romance between Martin and Laurie Jorgensen (Vera Miles), one that belongs in a lesser Western to this one. The selection of eccentric supporting characters, including those played by Ward Bond, Hank Worden and Ken Curtis, certainly provide some amusement for the audience, but ultimately detract from the murky themes that comprise the heart of the story, of Ethan’s endless search to retrieve his niece from the Comanches; or, otherwise, to purge her “pollution” through murder. As far as Westerns go {and, I admit, I’ve never been an avid fan of the genre}, John Ford’s The Searchers is one of the finest that I’ve seen, despite a few uneven patches. The film works equally well as both a brooding character study and an entertaining adventure, and that’s surely not a balance that could have been achieved easily. For now, I’ll maintain that my two favourite Westerns are The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Little Big Man (1970), but I can’t wait to discover what other treats John Ford has in store for me.

8/10

Currently my #5 film of 1956:
1) Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox)
2) Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (Don Siegel)
3) The Killing (Stanley Kubrick)
4) Moby Dick (John Huston)
5) The Searchers (John Ford)

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