The Great America Some Voters Yearn For

Because I read RoddyDoyle's novel, “The Dead Republic,” in which John Ford appears as a significant, fictionalized character, I became more interested in John Ford than in Doyle's novel (a disappointment). I watched“Directed by John Ford,” a tribute to him by Peter Bogdanovich, made in 1971, which explains why other important movie directors admired Ford so much. My curiosity was aroused even further, so I decided to download one of his movies and see why people like Scorcese and Spielberg thought so highly of him.

I chose “The ManWho Shot Liberty Valence” mainly because I have always liked Jimmy Stewart (a fellow graduate of Princeton, after all) as much as I have disliked John Wayne.

Some movies made in 1962 (when I graduated high school) are extremely dated, and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” is a prime example. The characters lack depth. The plot is stupid. The moral issues are clichés. The scenery and the sets are patently artificial. But I watched it to the end and enjoyed it – possibly because it made me realize how much things have changed in the ensuing years. I also wanted to see how ridiculous John Wayne and Any Devine could get, as well as the exaggerated drunks – funny alcoholics.

John Wayne plays a soft-hearted tough guy, and Jimmy Stewart plays a brave wimp, whose successful political career is based on his fame as the man who killed Liberty Valence, Lee Marvin. The bad guy is a mild villain compared to sadists I have seen on the screen in the past decades. But you can tell that Marvin was having fun playing him, whereas Jimmy Stewart seemed mildly embarrassed throughout film, and John Wayne didn't even try to act. The female lead, Vera Miles, was told twice by John Wayne that she looked pretty when she was mad, and she didn't even shoot him.

The explicit political message is democratic: people are created equal (even John Wayne's loyal, black hired man), and citizens can successfully mobilize, vote, and defeat powerful and unscrupulous special interests (farmers against cattle ranchers). Nor is the West lily-white. In a brief, unbelievable schoolroom scene, the brightest pupil is a Mexican-American girl, and, later, John Wayne almost forces the bartender to serve his African-American sidekick (played by Woody Strode).

However, if I got it right, the implicit political message verges on fascistic: you'd better have a gun, a real man risks his life (Jimmy Stewart confronts Lee Marvin, who is a far superior gunman), and political success is based on a lie (John Wayne really killed Lee Marvin). The West is where men can (and have to) be men.

If you missed “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” back in 1962, don't bother watching it now. However, I did see why directors admire Ford's directing, the way he used scenery, the way he managed crowd scenes, and the way he got actors to seem natural even in preposterous situations. He clearly had a deep grasp of what the cinema is and can be. He also had a naïve idea about American greatness that leads only to the political nightmare we are living in now.