The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Like Pontius Pilate, director John Ford asks "What is truth?" in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--but unlike Pilate, Ford waits for an answer. The film opens in 1910, with distinguished and influential U.S. senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) returning to the ...more

In his elegy to the Western hero, John Ford reveals the facts while printing the western legend. To examine what was at stake in transforming the western wilderness into a civilized garden, Ford sets up the opposition between James Stewart's Eastern lawyer Ranse Stoddard and Lee Marvin's brutal outlaw Liberty Valance, with John Wayne's archetypal hero Tom Doniphon forced to intervene. While Tom takes Stoddard's side in favor of the greater good, the spread of civilization comes at his own ...more