The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance

 

            I extended my John Wayne month for good reasons I was in a strong sense over working on my everyday life and mostly feeling a bit tired in the sense of pulling long hours. Though for good reasons I was having small trouble finding some other John Wayne movies I have not seen. Though through the course of the short break, I began to realize that you can't necessarily have a John Wayne month if you can't talk about the great and respectable friendship between two of our greatest actors of all time John Wayne and James Stewart for which leads to the second to final movie in the John Wayne month. 

            Questions arise when Senator Ranse Stoddard (James Stewart) attends a funeral for a local man named Tom Doniphan (John Wayne) in a small Western town. We flash back to the time when Stoddard first comes to town and is attacked by an outlaw named Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and is later saved by Doniphan himself. Both men of different backgrounds suddenly are the only two to stand up to Valance as well as the only two people that can save their town from terror and corruption, though both men are later in life become legends but with a price. 

             Like I said earlier you can't really have a John Wayne month without talking about the greatest friendship between John Wayne and James Stewart, two of the greatest actors of all time, moreover two titans of the Golden age of actors in Hollywood if I may say. Both men were first introduced by one another by a Hollywood banquet hosted by John Ford himself, and Ford introduced each other at that very banquet. Though granted the Liberty Valance was their first film together as well as a collaboration with Ford, through the years they've been respectable friends over the course of four decades. And in the Duke's final years Stewart visit him quietly even upon is death in 1979, for which shows that these two men were not just friends for Hollywood, but a real friendship built on respect and admiration. The movie is defiantly a great example of two men in a Western environment with different ways of how to deal with justice in the West, Wayne represents the tough and gritty world of the West, while Stewart represents the law abiding citizen as well as wanting to make the town a safer place without violence, and yet both men need each other though the course of the movie because they both help each other in times when they need help. Like most Western's or any Superhero movie you need a great antagonist to push their protagonist to the edge of finally standing up to their antagonist and Lee Marvin is hands down the best villain in any Western movie combined, and it was John Wayne himself that actually recommended Marvin for the role of Vallance and Marvin is fantastic through the course of the movie where you just hate him from beginning to the very end as well as relieved to see him get his componence and that's what you always want to have for a bad guy and Marvin is fantastic. Now sure, people who've never seen a John Wayne film or a James Stewart film would of course through this fit that their acting might be horrible or mediocre but I would beg to differ in the sense that both Wayne and Stewart are both different protagonist and yet you root for them through the course of it furthermore while Wayne is a brave and tough Cowboy in every Western he's in for which of course you need but deep down with this movie he does a great job playing sad in the sense of helping others cost him deeply and yet realizes that he can't always give the woman he loves a better life. Jimmy Stewart on the other hand plays a perfect outsider who sticks to his principles even in the end when secrets are revealed and he has to continue going because it's the only way to save a town from utter destruction, and both Wayne and Stewarts characters together are tragic characters through the course of the movie because they both have to keep a close secret for each of them because in the infamous line in the movie "this is the West, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend" for which in all honesty that's the who brass on what the wild West and mythic tales on how the West evolved in America and the way Ford portrays heroes and legends are a great contrast to Greek myths in Ancient times. This was actually the first film in which John Ford doesn't use massive landscapes but small towns with a kiss of landscapes to go along with it, but yet with this film it's strikingly violent and yet you don't see the violent act onscreen and that's always the beauty of movies like John Ford's work and granted, this is almost reminiscent to The Searchers. But you see the depiction of violence but you let the imagination do the work and that's always the impressive way of how Ford's films depict violence to the extent that you don't see the act of violence happening but you get shocked in terms of what you’re seeing on screen and it's almost like the opposite of a Quentin Tarantino movie where Quentin shows the violence happening and Ford lets the audience imagination to the work. And so, like many of John Wayne's finer works this is without a doubt a great movie to watch for all fans of Westerns, especially when the film is finally on Tubi, hopefully for a long time and not for a short while. Though with great performances from both Wayne and Stewart together, this film depicts the Western lore of heroes and legends coming align in a time when America was about to evolve from a world of violence and more importantly this film is another great example of Western lore and myths almost the same way Greece has the Gods and heroes and us American's have Westerns to love and cherish. But more importantly this is a great example of two legendary American Actors each are both different in terms of hero standards but are both friends till the very end as well as built on respect and admiration and more importantly a great example of friendship in a time when the West was in the midst of changing.