The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Director: John Ford
Rating: NR
“This is the west. When the legend becomes a fact, print it.”
Westerns reexamine our ethos, our myths, our understanding of humanity, but it is not always clear in a John Ford film, especially in the The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The film offers a complex examination of our understanding of what makes a true Western hero as the narrative lays out the prototypal Western template: a community terrorized by a ruthless, self-serving gunslinger, Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and his sidekicks. The marshal, a cowardly, whiskey-chugging glutton is ineffectual. As a result, the community is fearful and helpless. Such a template sets the groundwork that attempts to answer two questions: Is a civilized justice that denounces violence enough to protect the community? What truly makes a western hero? The answers to these questions exploit our expectations of the Western genre. Because of this, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance is also one of the best western parables that deals with our own understanding of mythological truths that are surprisingly paradoxical—especially when it comes to understanding the real soul of a western hero.
The film begins with Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) now an aged and renowned senator revisiting a community with his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles). A reporter inquires about his arduous journey from Washington to Shinbone just to attend a funeral for a gun-toting rancher, Tom Donipan (John Wayne). Ransom tells his story about his connection with Tom Donipan in the form of a flashback. The story begins decades ago when three ruthless outlaws, Liberty Valance and his men, hold up a stagecoach with Ransom and two other people in it. Ransom receives a violent beating when he attempts to save a woman from having to give up her prized broach in which Liberty demanded. Ransom, a then attorney, vows to avenge him by prosecuting Liberty and his men.
Ransom, penniless due to the robbery, helps out as a dishwasher and waiter in the Erricson restaurant, owned by Peter and Nora Erricson and their daughter, Hallie. Amid his employment Ransom is able to recover from his injuries. From this, he is introduced to his antithesis Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). Tom Doniphon is the community’s gunslinging hero who believes in the use of violence in order to restore order in the community. He is the only man in the community who is brave enough to stand up to Liberty and his cronies. He embodies the rugged and independent masculine hero. The community appreciates Tom’s bravery even though it is considered unorthodox. But as with all gunslinging heroes, he is marginally “accepted” as an ordinary citizen in the community and, therefore, incapable of being fully integrated as one of “them.” This is illustrated as both Tom and Ransom compete for Hallie’s hand in marriage, which highlights their differing temperaments and personalities. Unlike Tom, Ransom is conventional in a sense that he is a bookish, learned man and moral idealist. He believes in a civilized justice without the use of violence. Yet those values are ineffectual for an unsophisticated community whose only hope is to get through a day without the terror of Liberty Valance and cronies. Thus, there are two differing approaches when it comes to enforcing justice: Tom uses a gun and the Ransom uses the written law. Their competing approaches (as well as masculine wills) also carry over to a more personal circumstance such as competing for Hallie’s hand in marriage.
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Ransom agrees to a duel with Liberty after finding the town’s newspaperman was badly beaten by Liberty and his men. He decided to take justice in his own hands—literally and figuratively. This is illustrated when Tom tries to teach Ransom how to use a gun in which he is clumsy and awkward. Tom ends up ridiculing Ransom’s naiveté in believing he can simply train himself to be a gunslinger—a skill that only comes naturally for one who has lived and experienced the untamed and unpredictable frontier. Ransom is unable to recognize that he cannot adequately fit into Tom’s world even if he tried. In spite of this, Ransom vehemently tells Tom that he does not want to be tricked, that is, be made a fool of when it comes to fighting in spite of the fact he fails to understand the tricks of the trade of a gunslinger.
Tom is intuitively aware that Ransom’s law books and poor fighting skills are no match for Liberty Valance and his men, and Ransom’s growing naiveté places him in grave danger. Although Ransom does not want anyone fighting his battles, Tom remains in his shadow to protect him, especially amid his big showdown with Liberty Valance. At a distance, Tom secretly fires the fatal shot for Ransom. As a result, Ransom and the community are made to believe that he has defeated Liberty Valance.
Because of this, Ransom is able to win Hallie’s hand in marriage as opposed to Tom who was actually willing to sacrifice his rugged ways and live the conventional life (i.e., to settle down in a home he has built with his own hands and start a family with Hallie).
For Tom, saving another man has cemented his status as an outlier who is just passing through the community. Tom’s valuable contributions in saving the community are overshadowed by the more idealized hero—in this case, Ransom, a believer of civil law. Tom’s ultimate sacrifice is finally unveiled when the narrative flashes forward to the film’s final scene where we see an older and more distinguished Ransom. In this scene, he returns to the community years later to attend Tom’s funeral. From this, he realizes that he has been tricked again and the truth will never be told because society is attracted to a more sensational mythology: A man who was down on his luck was able to put an end to a community’s terror. The story is too good to be true, but society has made it true. The spectacular “legend” behind the community’s new “hero”—one that is more educated about the law, domesticated, and civilized—becomes more accepting and most importantly, a better headline for the papers. Thus, we are all quick to dismiss the rugged westerner by making him irrelevant. And when we watch Ford’s The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, we are admonished for not accepting the fact that a real hero is usually the forgotten, the rugged, the outsider, and the one with true insight about the fallibility of the law.
October 27, 2016