The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Starkly photographed and often heavily screened for nighttime shots, Ford's picture of the West here is a gloomy one, often pitch black when the only thing that comes out of it is the beastly Marvin. Many cliches and stereotypes people the film; the crusading newspaper editor, for example, had been used in many an earlier western, notably DODGE CITY. Oddly Ford, the master of great western exterior scenes, shot the entire film on two Paramount sound stages. Auteur critics have found much worth in this elegiac film, though in some ways it revisits the themes of Ford's earlier FORT APACHE. The movie is certainly above average, thanks to the performances by Stewart and Wayne, but Marvin is so flamboyant a badman that he is simply a caricature, even more so than in his outlandish Oscar-winning turn in CAT BALLOU.