The Man who Shot Liberty Valance
Let’s just say, I now understand why Stalin loved the John Ford films. Ideologically, this is absolutely hideous, borderline un-American in the deconstruction of a classic Western tale.
There’s a framing device concerning the Senator going all the way back to Shinbone, some podunk town where he made his name as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. He went to the funeral of his buddy Tom, and tells their story to the press.
When the Senator was just a lawyer, fresh out of school, he passed the bar and was duly licensed to practise law in the Territory of Arizona.
As his stagecoach was arriving at Shinbone, they are surrounded by a gang of outlaws with bandannas and all. The money box is taken, as are the passenger’s wallets. Our protagonist complains about them manhandling a woman, demanding her brooch, so he stands up and gets beat down. Liberty Valance, the head outlaw, beats him up even worse when he notices all those law treatises. The guy had to be restrained by his outlaw minions.
The leaves our protagonist left for dead, before being rescued by Tom Bombadil (or whatever weird name he has), and taken to a private residence of some Swedish couple, with a lovely young lady living upstairs. Tom courts her most shamelessly. Besides the Black servant, the town has an actual Marshal, some fool called Link, scared of his own shadow. Only Tom has the True Grit.
The protagonist wants this Liberty Valance jailed, Tom gives him a gun, for close encounters. The Sheriff won’t lift a finger, to arrest a know criminal, you give me that juris-my-dick-tion crap, you can cram it up your ass.
Tom has the means, but not any reason to stick his neck out. He is a practical man, with a slave-ish manservant, unaware and hostile to this high-fallutin educated Eastern hotshots. He just wants Hallie, the waitress, he is even building a new room and porch just for her.
The protagonist lost his money, so he works on the Swedish chef’s joint. Boarding and working together with the love interest, smart move. Tom is out there rustling cattle or horse trading, always on the saddle. Freaking NERDS!
He quickly gets another job as reporter for the paper, and teacher to the illiterate masses. After some ABCs, he educates them on the system of government they live under, with all the spiel about consent of the governed, amendments to the Constitution, yada yada. The black man fails to recite some crap equal rights for all, when he doesn’t vote in the next big scene! Neither does the woman, she was the one that wanted to learn how to read the Bible!
The big political fight is over statehood of their unincorporated territory. The big ranchers want the avoid that, so they can keep acquiring land with mercenary crews, like that Liberty Valance gang. Without the muscle, statehood is easily won.
The election is easily won by the protagonist and the newspaper dude, but Liberty Valance does a little prodding and vote manipulation, in plain view of the officer of the law. This makes the gangster pissed, so he trashes the newspaper and beat the owner pretty badly.
After seeing the consequences for his associates, our protagonist fetches his gun and confronts the evil dude, making the cattle powerful enough. He gets toyed with, shot in the wrist, but then kills him on the spot… Or is it?
The protagonist has a big talk with Tom, but Tom admits he’s got the hots for the waitress, but since she loves the protagonist, it’s a setup for future hanky-panky. Tom gets drunk and burns the whole new house.
Turns out Tom is the one that killed the bad guy, on a side road, but he let the protagonist take the credit, take the girl, the whole this. Absolute death of ego, the antithesis of rugged individualism.
This is only 7 years before Easy Rider, it’s almost contemporary. Buy here, Liberty calls the protagonist “dude” all the time! I wracked my brain trying to tie this up with the other dude, but whoa, lost my train of thought there.
The contrast between the ideals and the practice is shown, but not commented upon.
There’s a big emotional scene where the Swedish chef votes for the first time, even his wife gets emotional, but she doesn’t even get in the room.
Pompey the servant doesn’t either, he gets called “boy”, does not get served in the saloon, and forgets about what the Constitution says about “all men being equal”.
The Mexicans are segregated from the WASP invaders. The villain himself is fully Mexican coded, with an entire outfit almost like a matador, while Tom is a classic Cowboy, and the protagonist is an East Coast man of letters. Even the cowardly marshal has his Mexican family with dozens of children.
The only mentions of Native Americans are references to “redskin barbarians” in the political speeches. They talk about living in a desert, but there’s plenty of buffalo and many trees.
Even the fourth estate is brutally attacked. The only newspaper in town is ran by a drunk, who will say anything to get booze in credit. In the “present”, the newsman on the city listen to the story how a sitting Senator shooting an outlaw is bunk, then burn the notes. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”.
On the speeches at the end, they have the gall of putting the big ranchers on the right side, and the protagonist on the Left. In 1962, smack in the middle of the civil rights movement. Worse, right winger has a Confederate uniform, I missed that! He even complains that the protagonist shames Lincoln, for being known for his murder.
Jimmy Stewart has his great accent, John Wayne plays a parody of himself. The centre of the love triangle is Vera Miles (from Psycho, the sister). The black servant is a former NFL player Woody Strode, from Spartacus. The villain is a properly villainous Lee Marvin, the cowardly marshal is a Slim Pickens dead ringer. Liberty Valance’s right hand man is Lee Van Cleef, very young, he has about one line. Towards the end, the big speech in favour of the big ranchers is John Carradine, a prim and proper Englishman.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.