The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: Difference between revisions

That single quote, uttered by newspaperman Maxwell Scott (Carlton Young), encapsulates the primary theme of '''''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'''''. Truth is only accepted as long as it agrees with what the public wants to hear. The public needs heroes! So when heroes don't exist, it is necessary to invent them. And, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

[[John Ford]], a filmmaker since 1914, already had given the movie-going public such classics as ''[[The Iron Horse]],'' ''[[Stagecoach]],'' ''[[My Darling Clementine]],'' ''[[Fort Apache]],'' ''[[She Wore a Yellow Ribbon]],'' and ''[[The Searchers]].'' Ford's last great Western, '''''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,''''' makes explicit everything that was implicit in the genre which Ford himself shaped so heavily. By clearly showing that the conquest of the west meant the triumph of civilization (embodied in [[Jimmy Stewart]]) over wild innocence ([[John Wayne]]) and evil ([[Lee Marvin]]), this elegiac film serves as a film coda for Ford and also meditates on what was lost as progress and statehood marched across the West. The film's concluding aphorism has entered the American lexicon: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."