The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

The most famous line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford 1962) is undoubtedly "This is the West sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." It has gotten a life of its own, popping up on a number of different occasions. But there is another line, also spoken in the first few minutes of the film, which to me is of equal importance. The film begins with a US senator and his wife arriving with train to the (fictional) town called Shinbone, where they once lived, many years ago. As she goes on a tour of the place with an old friend, the former marshal, she says "The place sure has changed. Churches, high schools, shops." The marshal replies "Well, the railroad done that." I have earlier written about trains and their importance for films and for society at large, the blood stream of modernity (here and here), and Liberty Valance is one of the films which directly deals with this. The railroad changes everything. In a later scene the senator says to a couple of reporters that they are young, they do not remember the old days before the railroad. It is a reminder that John Ford's breakthrough was The Iron Horse (1924), a film about the building of the transcontinental railroad, from California to Iowa (where it connected with the railroad to the east coast). Both these films are also a reminder that one of Ford's main thematic concerns has always been the history of the United States. Some have called Ford the Shakespeare of the US, and he has also been compared to Balzac, but there is another Frenchman that could be invoked. Alexis de Tocqueville.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is told in one long flashback, with the senator, Ranse Stoddard (James Stewart), explaining to the reporters why he has come back to Shinbone after so many years. He and his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles) have come because an old friend has died, Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). But the story is not just one of these three people, it is also about democracy in America, hence the relevance of mentioning Tocqueville, and his major study of the US, Democracy in America (De la démocratie en Amérique) published in two parts 1835 and 1840. His analysis of, for example, the grassroot democracy in small towns, such as Shinbone; the habit of having elections for all positions (although de Tocqueville disapproves of having judges elected); his talk of "self-interest well understood" as the bedrock of American society; his emphasis on the importance of justice, including as a check on democracy itself. These are things which Liberty Valance and other films by Ford address. Combining Ford and Tocqueville has been done before (see for example Robert Pippin's essay "Tocqueville, the Problem of Equality, and John Ford's Stagecoach") but I wonder if not more can be done here. Most of Ford's films that are set in the past, at least those set in the American past, could be studied in tandem with Democracy in America. The fact that Ford's depiction of that past changed over time might make such a comparative study even more interesting.

Hallie, Pompey and in the back the Ericsons.

I have seen The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance many times, but it continues to grow on me. At first I did not like it, for much the same reasons that it was disliked when it came out in 1962 and was seen as cheap, stagey and old-fashioned, far from the powerful landscapes and rich colours of Ford's earlier films. But Ford had deliberately made it in such a style, bringing the look closer to a certain kind of silent westerns (not like the epic The Iron Horse) but the simple and contained ones. But there is nothing simple about Liberty Valance. It is complex and nuanced, and rich with bitterness. The young Ranse Stoddard is idealistic, excited and passionate, he believes in law and justice. The old Stoddard has become pompous, patrician and condescending. Whether he believes in anything anymore is a valid question. Tom Doniphon, who was once respected and loved by all, a pillar of society, has died alone and forgotten. Hallie Stoddard probably married the wrong man. And both Shinbone's success and Ranse Stoddard's political career are based on a lie. That is not the view of an old-fashioned film, even if Ford's style might be a deliberate homage to an earlier style of filmmaking. It is also Ford's way of addressing his own films. This is very much a Fordian film, even if the basic plot about Liberty Valance and his death comes from a short story by Dorothy M. Johnson, to which Ford had acquired the rights. The script was written by James Warner Bellah, on whose stories Ford's so-called cavalry trilogy were also based, and Willis Goldbeck. This was the second film they wrote together for Ford, the previous one was Sergeant Rutledge (1960) in which Woody Strode played the title role. (There is a prominent musical theme in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance which is the same as appears in Young Mr. Lincoln which Ford made in 1939.)

John Wayne's character Tom Doniphon is similar to Ethan Edwards, Wayne's character in Ford's earlier The Searchers (1956). They are both interstices between the past, which they represent, and the future, which they help bring about but are unable to join. They are also in-between violence and peace. Liberty Valance (played by Lee Marvin) is the villain in this film, but there is not a neat line between him and the rest of town, it is a grey area. Doniphon is right in the middle. He is not psychotic and homicidal like Ethan Edwards, instead he descends into self-pity and resentment, but they still have the same role in society.

Liberty Valance is an ambivalent villain because, while he is often referred to as pure evil, he is insecure and bitter too. It sometimes seems as if he is violent and arrogant as a reaction against the town's hatred towards him. Sometimes he looks at Doniphon and Stoddard with a puzzled expression, sometimes with envy, sometimes with resentment. In the end, when he is shot, the doctor contemptuously rolls him over and says "He's dead." after which he is thrown on a wagon and driven out of town, his legs hanging down and the boots almost dragging in the sand. It is like as if the minute he is killed, he is forgotten.

I also said that Doniphon died alone and forgotten, but that is not quite true. His friend Pompey (Woody Strode) was with him until the end. Their friendship was of the "close personal" kind that might be given a queer reading, although it is not necessary. But Pompey is an important character, and there are a few pointed scenes with him, based around the fact that he is a black man. In one scene he is reciting the Declaration of Independence, standing beside a photograph of Abraham Lincoln, but is unable to remember the words "that all men are created equal". Perhaps he was unable to say them because he had never been treated as an equal. In a later scene, when he is denied service in a saloon, the audience is reminded of this.

The joy, hope and aspirations of the church building scene in Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) are nowhere to be seen in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but it would be a mistake to see this is a sudden change in Ford's outlook. His films have rarely been cheerful and optimistic. There is great beauty in them, and sometimes love and kindness triumphs, but there is frequent darkness, tragedy, a mourning of something that has gone missing but was probably never there in the first place. In How Green Was My Valley (1941) the grown man remembers his childhood with affection and longing, yet that childhood is presented as being filled with poverty, death, prejudice and oppression. There is usually a double view of the past in Ford's films, and so it is in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

"The place sure has changed. Churches, high schools, shops." Hallie said, and the marshal replied "Well, the railroad done that." Then he added, wistfully, "The desert's still the same."

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This post does not walk alone, it has a partner. My friend and former guest blogger Sofia Åkerberg has also written about The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance for today. Read her here.

The Iron Horse is not a great film, and maybe it would have been better if Raoul Walsh had directed it. But it is not a bad film either. There is especially a scene on a train filled with wounded men and women, among them an old man who is weeping inconsolably next to his dead friend, which is heartbreaking.

Three earlier post by me about Ford are here: The Grapes of Wrath, Tobacco Road, The Searchers.

Trains in art and motion

To complement an earlier post about trains (and to mentioned Richard Fleischer again), here is a fantastic shot from Violent Saturday (Fleischer 1955).

It is almost like an optical illusion, with the smoke not coming from the train yet looking like it does. The low angle of the camera captures the immense sky and the plains and hills and the pylons also help to make the image come alive, without being cluttered.

Just for good measure, here are two paintings from two key European artists that also signals the allure that trains have on the imagination of artists. The first is J.M.W. Turner's Rain, Steam and Speed from 1844.

One critic said that Turner had managed to paint "speed itself". You may not see it on this small image but there is a hare in front of the train, desperately trying to escape from it, a detail that gives added meaning and depth to the painting. 

The second example is by Claude Monet, who made a number of paintings with trains (as did other Impressionists as well, such as Camille Pissarro). 

This one is called Train in the Snow (or The Locomotive), from 1875, and is much less explosive than Turner's. There is no speed here but a moment of rest, which is more in line with Monet's sensibilities. It seems cold, only the headlights generate any heat or colour, but instead of feeling in any way threatening this train seems to be kind and inviting. 

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If you want to see the real paintings Turner's is to be found at the National Gallery in London (even there the hare is difficult to spot) and Monet's is at Musée Marmottan in Paris.

Trains and the cinema

The latest challenge from Filmspanarna was trains, meaning I am supposed to write something about trains and films. This post is my contribution.

Towards the end of the 19th century a number of important inventions that changed human's perception of both time and space had been firmly established, with cinema being the last of them (or maybe radio). Railways were one such invention, or rather the combination of several inventions developed over a longer time. The steam locomotive came upon in the very beginning of the 19th century, but the first public railway opened in Britain in 1825 and in 1869 the First Transcontinental Railroad opened in the US. The train made it possible to travel fast and cover long distances, which made the world smaller and more manageable. Trains also meant that time needed to be standardised as it would not be possible to have a comprehensible time schedule if every other town and village had their own time. (Standardised time was even called railway time.) The electrical telegraph, the system of transmitting messages on wires over vast distances very quickly, developed more or less simultaneously, and the telegraph lines often went up along the railway networks. The telephone, which made it possible to even speak in person to somebody far away, made its first appearance in the 1870.*

So trains and cinema are connected. Just consider how several key films in the development of cinema are train-related, such as L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1896), The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter 1903) or The Lonedale Operator (D.W. Griffith 1911). The last two of them also combined trains and the telegraph, neatly summing up the modern world.



A common theme in films about American 19th century history is the disruptive effects trains had, both positive and negative. In Matrix (The Wachowskis 1999) there is a scene where agent Smith is trying to kill Neo by pushing him in front of an oncoming train. When the approaching train is heard Smith says "That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death." and that is how many felt when the railway was being built across farmlands and such. While the railroad is often seen as a positive thing, bringing progress and prosperity, other times it is seen as a bad thing, bringing death and corruption. Last year's The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski 2013) is a current example of this. John Ford's breakthrough The Iron Horse (1924) is an early example where the railroad is seen in a positive light. Duel in the Sun (King Vidor 1946) shows both sides of the conflict, with the father and one son being against the railroad and the other son in favour of it. The pro-train son is the one who ultimately prevails. But there are hundreds of films around this theme. (What is less often acknowledged is that the railways across the US were to a large extent built by poorly paid Chinese workers.) Fewer films have been made about building the telegraph network, but there is at least Fritz Lang's Western Union (1941). It suggests that the telegraph caused disruptions too.

Trains are not only important in American films of course; it is a universal theme, albeit perhaps less connected to a national mythology in other countries. But in Satyajit Ray's first film Pather Panchali (1955) there is a sequence when young Apu and his sister, living in poverty in a small village, runs across the countryside to catch a glimpse of a train. The train here, too, as a symbol of progress and change.

Many filmmakers have showed themselves being drawn to trains, and it is a very cinematic thing. They are not only symbolic but also alive and moving, Unstoppable, at least according to the title of Tony Scott's last film (2010). An especially forceful depiction of a train is to be found in Runaway Train (1985), directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and based on a script originally written by Akira Kurosawa. Yet they are also recurring images in the much more still and quiet films of Yasujiro Ozu. But the one filmmaker for whom trains is especially important is of course David Lean. It is not only Brief Encounter (1945) and The Bridge of the River Kwai (1957) that are based around trains, they are an essential part of Lean's films, almost all of them. Summer Madness (1955, aka Summertime), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), A Passage to India (1984), even a film which is primarily set on a ship, In Which We Serve (1942), has important scenes set on a train. Cinema and trains become one in his films: the greatest of filmmakers is also a great train lover. It was perhaps inevitable.

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*Less relevant but still important was the development of mail order services, which really took off in the 1860s when Pryce Pryce-Jones in Wales began sending catalogues of his goods to the whole of Britain so that anybody could order from his shop and he would send it to them. (20 years later Sears in the US became the Amazon of its age the same way.)

John Frankenheimer's The Train (1964) is one of his best film and consequently one of the best films of the 1960s.

Here are links to the other contributors in the train challenge. They are all in Swedish with one exception - the first link. The Velvet Café, Rörliga bilder och tryckta ord, Except fear, Moving Landscapes, Jojjenito, Fripps filmrevyer, Movies-Noir, Fiffis filmtajm, Filmitch, Har du inte sett den.

Buster Keaton's The General (1926)