I either love or hate John Ford's early movies; there's no middle ground. Anyone who admired F. W. Murnau as much as Ford had to be touched by the great man's fire, but many of Ford's well-regarded films, "The Iron Horse," "Young Mr. Lincoln," and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," seem dreadfully mannered and stylized compared to "3 Bad Men," "Stagecoach," "My Darling Clementine," and "Fort Apache." After 1948 Ford embraced his worst idiosyncrasies, as did his co-dependent John Wayne, who became an enthusiastic promoter of his own "legend."
Not heeding the glaring defects in Ford's worst films, the film school generation of directors in the 1970s over-praised films that were rightfully panned by the critics. One of the travesties they promoted to "classic" status is Ford's adaptation of the interesting Dorothy Johnson short story "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."
In Johnson's story "Rance" Foster is an insufferable eastern snob itching to face Liberty Valance in a gun duel because the outlaw had savagely beat him for no reason, injuring his sense of eastern superiority. Cowboy Bert Burricane saves him from dying of thirst on the prairie, but he repays Burricane with indifference and, on his own, begins pistol practice for his showdown with Valance. He dislikes everyone in town because he's humiliated at having to take a swamper's job in a saloon. And although Burricane's girl Hallie is drawn to Rance because of his education, he conceals his attraction for her because he's embarrassed to show interest in an illiterate girl he's teaching to read. When Valance comes to town Rance jumps at the opportunity to meet the outlaw and gain respect in the eyes of others even if it means his death. Burricane kills Valance from a concealed vantage point just as the two men fire, making it look as if Rance killed Valance. When Burricane tells Rance he killed Valance, he explains that he did it because he loves Hallie enough to let her have the man she wants. After recovering from a wound he received in the gunfight, Rance marries Hallie and is elected Senator in part because of publicity generated by the shooting. Years later when Burricane dies alone and forgotten, Rance returns to show respect for the man who changed him.
But instead of making James Stewart's character, Rance Stoddard, an eastern snob, Ford and his writers make him an idealistic young lawyer, uncomfortable with guns, who is beaten by Valance when he stands up for fellow passengers in a stagecoach holdup, and who continues to seek remedy through the law until forced into one desperate, violent act. John Wayne's character, Tom Doniphon, doesn't save Rance from his macho pride for Hallie's sake. He maintains his usual tough guy persona, urging Stoddard to get a gun, a man who is disappointed to find, when he loses Hallie after killing Valance, that the gunman's day is past. In Johnson's story the tough westerner ironically must teach the easterner to be a gentle man. But that's too radical a concept for Ford and the writers, who subvert Johnson's irony to make her story fit the western conventions she was trying to deflate.
But aside from the watered-down story, there are still the seemingly obligatory Ford inanities. Wayne and Stewart were certainly too old for their parts, and O. Z. Whitehead, who was one of Ford's Stock Company in '40s, plays a sullen, truant teenager in Stoddard's school, even though he was in his fifties. Then there is Woody Strode's "Yassuh, Boss" portrayal of Tom Doniphon's "boy" Pompey, and Edmund O'Brien's bombastic, drunken newspaper editor, an over-the-top ripoff of Thomas Mitchell's Doc Boone from "Stagecoach." And Ford insists yet again on having John Qualen annoy us with his best stage-Swedish accent.
Not heeding the glaring defects in Ford's worst films, the film school generation of directors in the 1970s over-praised films that were rightfully panned by the critics. One of the travesties they promoted to "classic" status is Ford's adaptation of the interesting Dorothy Johnson short story "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."
In Johnson's story "Rance" Foster is an insufferable eastern snob itching to face Liberty Valance in a gun duel because the outlaw had savagely beat him for no reason, injuring his sense of eastern superiority. Cowboy Bert Burricane saves him from dying of thirst on the prairie, but he repays Burricane with indifference and, on his own, begins pistol practice for his showdown with Valance. He dislikes everyone in town because he's humiliated at having to take a swamper's job in a saloon. And although Burricane's girl Hallie is drawn to Rance because of his education, he conceals his attraction for her because he's embarrassed to show interest in an illiterate girl he's teaching to read. When Valance comes to town Rance jumps at the opportunity to meet the outlaw and gain respect in the eyes of others even if it means his death. Burricane kills Valance from a concealed vantage point just as the two men fire, making it look as if Rance killed Valance. When Burricane tells Rance he killed Valance, he explains that he did it because he loves Hallie enough to let her have the man she wants. After recovering from a wound he received in the gunfight, Rance marries Hallie and is elected Senator in part because of publicity generated by the shooting. Years later when Burricane dies alone and forgotten, Rance returns to show respect for the man who changed him.
But instead of making James Stewart's character, Rance Stoddard, an eastern snob, Ford and his writers make him an idealistic young lawyer, uncomfortable with guns, who is beaten by Valance when he stands up for fellow passengers in a stagecoach holdup, and who continues to seek remedy through the law until forced into one desperate, violent act. John Wayne's character, Tom Doniphon, doesn't save Rance from his macho pride for Hallie's sake. He maintains his usual tough guy persona, urging Stoddard to get a gun, a man who is disappointed to find, when he loses Hallie after killing Valance, that the gunman's day is past. In Johnson's story the tough westerner ironically must teach the easterner to be a gentle man. But that's too radical a concept for Ford and the writers, who subvert Johnson's irony to make her story fit the western conventions she was trying to deflate.
But aside from the watered-down story, there are still the seemingly obligatory Ford inanities. Wayne and Stewart were certainly too old for their parts, and O. Z. Whitehead, who was one of Ford's Stock Company in '40s, plays a sullen, truant teenager in Stoddard's school, even though he was in his fifties. Then there is Woody Strode's "Yassuh, Boss" portrayal of Tom Doniphon's "boy" Pompey, and Edmund O'Brien's bombastic, drunken newspaper editor, an over-the-top ripoff of Thomas Mitchell's Doc Boone from "Stagecoach." And Ford insists yet again on having John Qualen annoy us with his best stage-Swedish accent.