The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE              A 
USA  (123 mi)  1962  d:  John Ford

This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
—Maxwell Scott (Carleton Young), newspaper editor

The last great work by Ford, which interestingly looks back at characters who are themselves reflecting back upon their lives, making this something of a memory play where Ford not only examines his own role in revitalizing the American Western, using some of his own stable of familiar stars to do it, he also questions the truth about our own history, raising some interesting questions about the role of newspapers, government, literature, cinema, and other artforms, showing how truth is often buried in order to form a more perfect and idealized legend, which becomes the substitute for the truth, but instead of an examination of the misperceptions of history, much of this film unfortunately feels like a rationalization for the director’s own actions.  Certainly Ford is guilty of elevating heroes to mythical status, like the iconic stature of actor John Wayne, seen as the great American hero, the man who boldly stands above all others as an example of hard grit and that individual frontier spirit, always seen as the toughest guy and the fastest gun in the West.  But despite his penchant for so-called accuracy and historical authenticity, Ford also negatively stereotypes the West, creating racial stigmas that have lasted through generations for more than half a century, where his repeating stream of derogatory stereotypical images have contributed mightily to the racist depiction of Indians as savages in order to make way for the coming white settlers, where his own mythology has not only proven inaccurate, but helped perpetuate the myth of white superiority in a historical era of the American West when Indians were subject to attack by the U.S. Cavalry and forced to a life on isolated reservations, or total annihilation if they refused.  Surrender often led to starvation, rotten food, or worse, as so many Indians died from infection and contagious diseases. This bleak inevitability coincides with the slaughter of the plains buffalo to near extinction, all but eliminating their food source and the Indian way of life, a nomadic existence that followed the buffalo herds.  You won’t find any cultural reference to Indian genocide or extermination in a John Ford movie, with the exception of the apologetic Cheyenne Autumn (1964), which instead focuses on the legendary white heroes who settled the West. 

One of Ford’s best films, as it’s likely his most provocative and self-reflective work, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE is a different kind of western, as it’s not shot in the great outdoors of the Monument Valley and doesn’t include a single Indian, instead it’s a chamber drama that moves indoors as it looks back at the first vestiges of democracy and government in action, as represented by a feisty but thoroughly domesticated James Stewart as Ransom Stoddard, a man hell-bent on bringing what he learned from East coast law school to the savage wilderness of the West, pitted against notorious gunslingers and outlaws like Lee Marvin’s deranged Liberty Valance, a sadistic killer turned monster, hired by the wealthy cattle barons to force their will upon the populace, as they believe in open range as far as the eye can see with absolutely no government intervention.  Stuck in the middle of so-called progress is John Wayne as Tom Doniphon, given the reverential treatment here, as it’s his funeral that brings an ominous tone of solemnity to the opening of the film, told nearly entirely in flashback.  Doniphon is seen as a man already forgotten, as time has passed him by, yet he’s the heart of the story, as the West would never have survived without men like him.  Ford absolutely loves paying tribute to characters like this, unsung heroes that fought the pitch battles in a lawless frontier out in the middle of nowhere to make the world better for those that followed, laying the groundwork for a progress yet to come, eventually becoming a reality through the construction of the railroad, which changed the West, as humans came in droves afterwards.  This western is not interested in the Wild West, which Ford has already shown before, where men like Doniphon and Liberty Valance prevailed, but in the taming of the West, showing the first signs of civilization, when men put down their guns and attempted to reason with one another, developing the first laws of the land, where the idea of an endless frontier instead emerges into the first arguments on statehood, becoming a highly entertaining piece of feelgood, patriotic Americana, the kind of thing you can watch on the 4th of July along with Cagney’s YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942). 

Something of an auteur project, Ford located the property, developed the script along with long-time associates Willis Goldbeck and James Warner Bellah and raised half of the money needed himself, while choosing an all-star cast, including the first time John Wayne and James Stewart worked together in a movie.  The film represents an older and wiser man in the twilight of his career looking back, having already made MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946) and THE SEARCHERS (1956), critically acclaimed works that suggest something of an alternative mythology while accentuating the struggles between the individual and society, or chaos and civilization.  The decision to shoot the film in Black and White was startling to some, as the western genre in the 60’s tended to glorify the West by emphasizing the beauty of the landscape through panoramic Cinemascope vistas, like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960) or Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (1962), but this film was shot in the murky darkness of confined spaces, creating a claustrophobic, character driven world where Stewart, for instance, spends the majority of the time wearing an apron and washing dishes with Vera Miles as Hallie and the other women in the restaurant kitchen.  It’s quite a contrast to Wayne’s swaggering outdoor independence, a man who wouldn’t be caught dead doing women’s work.  Interesting enough, both men are vying for the same woman (outside of a Mexican cantina, she is the only available woman seen in town), though their lives are on different trajectories, as Doniphon is doomed to live in a world where he cannot adapt, while Stoddard becomes one of the West’s first schoolteachers attempting to eradicate an epidemic of illiteracy.  The already outdated western hero loses his girl and fades into obscurity while the lawyer from the East, a veritable Lincoln among the ruins, marries Hallie and rises to political power, becoming a 3-time Governor before ascending to the United States Senate.  Meanwhile, in the ultimate showdown between good and evil, order and violence, or truth and legend, the awkward tenderfoot Stoddard stubbornly faces off against the gleefully overconfident Liberty Valance as the rest of the town shirks its responsibilities, hiding in the crevices and cracks in the dark, best expressed by the over-eating, freeloader sheriff Andy Devine as Marshall Link Appleyard, a man who stays alive by continually avoiding confrontation.    

One interesting aspect of the film is it never shows the audience definitively who kills Liberty Valance, though most would assuredly think it does, but it’s impossible to tell from the footage provided just who’s gun the bullet came from, nonetheless, a legend is born, as Stoddard most certainly takes all the glory and credit which stays with him throughout his lengthy career, immortalized throughout history as the two men remain inseparable.  What Ford pessimistically shows is how fate is more of an accident or even a misunderstanding, while history depends largely upon who’s telling it.  By the time this film opens, at the end of Stoddard’s illustrious career, the West has already been settled and the myth of the western hero is remembered only in storybooks and flashbacks.  Stoddard may have attempted to bring the civilized values of the East to the town of Shinbone, but he only does it through deception and violence, earning his reputation not through the law, but by killing an evil incarnate.  At a nominating convention for statehood, his name is dragged through the mud as a murderer and his reputation sullied by the flowery language of the cattle baron’s mouthpiece, none other than John Carradine as Major Cassius Starbuckle, whose own candidate is nothing more than a grotesque spectacle.  But Stoddard has his own image-maker in the form of newspaper publisher and town drunk Dutton Peabody, Edmund O’Brien, whose own overly verbose, chiché-ridden performance nearly ruins the film with such an obnoxious, self-inflated sense of ego, where at one point in a rambling drunken stupor he even resorts to quoting (incorrectly) Shakespeare’s Henry V.  Yet it’s Peabody that sings the praises of Stoddard, anointing him to his new career as a mythical western hero, a noisy, frenetically wild sequence of pure mayhem and pandemonium where Ford seems to enjoy mocking the origins of the American political process with the same cynical tone reserved for the equally empty rhetoric of today.          

What’s truly groundbreaking about this film is the way Ford reverses the wheels, turns his back on his success, and makes a film that challenges the same assertions that led to his success in the first place.  This suggests a man confident enough of his place in history that he can challenge it while he’s still alive.  The stark look of the film, taking place entirely in one’s mental recollections, makes it almost an anti-western, where Doniphon’s bold and reckless man of the West has already outlived his time.  Usually placed just after THE SEARCHERS among Ford’s greatest works, it’s an interesting critique of his own mythmaking career, one that suggests history is filled with quasi-heroes, men whose public image and persona have been beefed up to hide and obscure the far different private lives behind the image, where suppression of the truth is a natural byproduct of the mythmaking process.  In this manner, the nation’s confidence is propped up by political lies and distorted exaggerations, where one assumes this is preferable to hearing the unwholesome truth.  But it also suggests “official” explanations may be leaving out what actually happened, case in point The Tillman Story (2010) or The Invisible War (2012).  While this rather dark and sinister film is itself closer to the truth, it’s also highly entertaining and often hilarious, such as when young Ransom Stoddard shuts down the bar, by law, while voting is in progress at the territorial convention, calling it one of the “Fundamental laws of democracy, no exception,” and Dutton Peabody is repeatedly reminded by Tom Doniphon that the bar is closed, yet he keeps squirming for just a beer, as “a beer’s not drinking!”  Reminded once again that there’s no exceptions, he quivers, “Why that’s carrying democracy much too far!”  The film’s maniacal violence from the whip-wielding Liberty Valance, who has to be held back by his own men, actually anticipates even greater, exaggerated choreographed extremes from Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, and even Clint Eastwood, where ironically Liberty Valance’s two henchmen include Peckinpah’s Strother Martin and Leone’s favorite villain, Lee van Cleef.  Nowhere in the film, by the way, does Gene Pitney sing “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” though it is advertised in the film’s posters and movie trailer.  Almost overlooked in the structure of the film, due to the central tension focused between Stoddard, Doniphon, and Valance, is the film’s concern with American politics and the birth of civilization in newly formed western towns, showing democracy in action at such fundamental levels by showing the significance of the role of the press, a town meeting, a debate over statehood, and the influence of education—all indoor preoccupations. 

Something should be said about Woody Strode, Tom Doniphon’s black sidekick Pompey, who worked in five John Ford movies, from his final film going all the way back to STAGECOACH (1939).  Though Doniphon treats him like he owns him, viewed as his loyal and obedient lackey, being John Wayne’s confidante in this film also gives him a certain elevated status with the audience, as they know his loyalty is not in dispute, that he always has Tom’s back, but he’s still not allowed into the saloon in Shinbone, as the bartender won’t serve a black man.  This little bit of racial harmony among friends, but disharmony within the larger society, is interesting, as Ford is intentionally bringing attention to this racial disparity, pointing out the injustice, something he failed to notice with his own belittling portrayal of Indians.   

Psycho

PSYCHO            A                

USA  (109 mi)  1960  d:  Alfred Hitchcock

Here we have a quiet little motel, tucked away off the main highway, and as you see perfectly harmless looking, whereas it has now become known as the scene of the crime…This motel also has an adjunct, an old house which is, if I may say so, a little more sinister looking. And in this house the most dire, horrible events took place. I think we can go inside because the place is up for sale— though I don’t know who would buy it now. In that window in the second floor, in the front, that’s where the woman was first seen. Let’s go inside. You see, even in daylight this place looks a bit sinister. It was at the top of these stairs that the second murder took place. She came out of that door there and met the victim at the top. Of course, in a flash there was the knife, and in no time the victim tumbled and fell with a horrible crash…I think the back broke immediately it hit the floor. It’s difficult to describe the way…the twisting of the…I won’t dwell on it.  Come upstairs. Of course the victim, or should I say victims, hadn’t any idea of the kind of people they’d be confronted with in this house. Especially the woman. She was the weirdest and the most…well, let’s go into her bedroom. Here’s the woman’s room, still beautifully preserved. And the imprint of her body on the bed where she used to lie. I think some of her clothes are still in the wardrobe. (He looks, and shakes his head.) Bathroom. This was the son’s room but we won’t go in there because his favourite spot was the little parlour behind the office in the motel. Let’s go down there. This young man…you have to feel sorry for him. After all, being dominated by an almost maniacal woman was enough to…well, let’s go in. I suppose you’d call this his hideaway. His hobby was taxidermy. A crow here, an owl there. An important scene took place in this room. There was a private supper here. By the way, this picture has great significance because…let’s go along into cabin number one. I want to show you something there. All tidied up. The bathroom. Oh, they’ve cleaned all this up by now. Big difference. You should have seen the blood. The whole place was…well, it’s too horrible to describe. Dreadful. And I tell you, a very important clue was found here. (Shows toilet.) Down there. Well, the murderer, you see, crept in here very slowly—of course, the shower was on, there was no sound, and…Music wells up fiercely, shower curtain swishes across. Blackout. Voice:  The picture you must see from the beginning—or not at all.  

—Alfred Hitchcock in the film’s trailer, 1960, in which he audaciously wanders around the sets and practically gives away the entire plot

The Granddaddy of all horror flicks, the film by which so many others are measured, shot in black and white with the look of a cheap, exploitative B-movie.  Hitchcock veered off into a different direction after a series of sophisticated thrillers from the 50’s, arguably Hitchcock’s best decade, making films like REAR WINDOW (1954), VERTIGO (1958), and NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959), where the director wanted instead to make a chillingly suspenseful film that would rival Henri-Georges Clouzot’s dark thriller DIABOLIQUE (1955).  Because of the luridly gruesome source material, the studio expected the film to fail miserably at the box office, so Hitchcock chose to finance the film himself, which he did for a modest $800,000, deferring his salary against the film’s profits.  Even Joan Harrison, Hitchcock’s longtime secretary since 1933, refused a cut of the profits, opting instead for a straight salary.  But Hitchcock shot everything on a shoestring budget, using the same crew from his television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955 – 62), where even the sets were cheap.  The Victorian mansion looming in the back of the Bates Motel cost a mere $15,000 to build.  In contrast, the Universal Studio Tour in Florida recently spent more than 20 times the film’s budget on a $20 million dollar “Psycho Experience.”  From the start, Hitchcock thought of this as a haunted house movie and envisioned terrorizing audiences with a starkly disturbing portrait of a psychopath whose meek demeanor resembles the boy next door.  Hitchcock’s gamble paid off, as the film was a certifiable smash hit.  It should be pointed out that one month prior to the U.S. premiere of PSYCHO, British director Michael Powell released his equally lurid serial killer movie PEEPING TOM (1960).  But unlike Hitchcock, whose career soared because of PSYCHO, Powell was vehemently castigated in the British press, calling it “appallingly masochistic and depraved…it is wholly evil,” even going so far as to call it a “snuff” film, where the movie was quickly pulled from the theaters and lost literally for decades, effectively destroying Powell’s career.     

Turning to Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho, based on the grisly, real-life crimes of Ed Gein, portrayed as a fat, middle-aged loner in the book, Hitchcock instead chooses to work with the twitchy, anxiety-ridden Anthony Perkins, known throughout Hollywood as a closeted homosexual, adding layers of nervous ambiguity to his eerie performance.  Hitchcock casts, from HALLOWEEN (1978), Jamie Lee Curtis’s mother, Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, a serious, attractive, no nonsense woman who almost never smiles, a woman in trouble, telegraphed from the opening scene where she’s only half dressed (Hitchcock regretted she was not nude), concealing an affair she’s having in a cheap hotel room.  While she’d love to run away with this guy, Sam Loomis, played by John Gavin, he’s too in hock by alimony payments to his former wife to be able to offer Marion the comforts that she’s grown accustomed to, so instead, she returns to the bank where she works after a lunch hour quickie.  Marion Crane becomes a person of interest, a woman who is not what she appears, a trusted employee who has been with the bank for ten years who is now mysteriously on edge, failing to make the bank deposit as promised, instead packing her bags, heading out of town and inexplicably taking $40,000 in cash from the bank’s money with her.  Everything up until now has been misdirection and counter moves, as ulterior motives are driving this woman, yet she can’t escape the grip of her own fear, best expressed by the troubled look on her face as she’s driving, where a police car follows her and keeps his eye on her, even though he has no knowledge of what she’s done.  She just has the look of a woman on the run who’s in too big of a hurry to get away.  This heightened anxiety is accentuated every step of the way by Bernard Hermann’s pulsating music, which drives a good part of the action when she’s alone driving in her car.  Occasionally a voice, like her conscience, interrupts, as voices in her head keep replaying earlier events of the day. 

By nightfall, a driving rainstorm sends her searching for a roadside motel, making the fateful decision to pull into the Bates Motel, a small, ghostlike establishment where she has to honk her horn for service, the first of a series of foreshadowing signs she chooses to overlook.  When the manager belatedly makes his appearance, Norman Bates (in a legendary performance by Anthony Perkins), a noticeably shy, hands-in-his-pockets, awkwardly sympathetic kind of guy who almost always smiles out of nervous habit, who makes pleasant conversation, easing her anxiety, offering her milk and sandwiches.  But when he goes to get the sandwiches, Marion overhears a disturbing conversation in the house behind the motel where Norman is berated by his mother, scolding him as if he were a child, creating yet another diversion, this one something of an embarrassment.  But Norman brings her the food, graciously invites her to the parlor behind the front desk, and attempts to set her mind at ease with polite earnestness while the viewer can’t take their eyes off the room’s décor, which is filled with giant stuffed birds hanging from the ceiling as if about to swoop down on them—an ominous sign.   Even in small talk, Norman has a brief moment when he gets wildly hysterical, yet instantly pulls himself back to his self-contained, non-threatening demeanor, and always attempts to be kind and considerate, like a perfect mama’s boy, slyly pointing out at one point, “Mother’s not quite herself today.” 

When Marion retires to her room for the night, vowing to get up early and return the money back to the bank in an attempt to undo whatever damage she may have done, everything appears to be set right again and there’s a calmness bordering on relief as she undresses to take a shower.  A shot of Marion removing her black bra before her shower was removed by U.S. censors while the scene remained intact in Great Britain.  No words are spoken for the next 10 to 15 minutes, yet they are among the most analyzed and celebrated scenes in film history.  While other scenes were shot with more than one camera, the 78 shots in the shower scene are simply 45 seconds of cinema history, using only one cameraman, perhaps best reflecting Hitchcock’s economically brilliant visual style.  Scored to Bernard Hermann’s screeching violins, the hysterical shriek on the soundtrack says it all, as the sharp blade of a knife jumps out from behind the pulled back shower curtain, and with several thrusting motions from what appears to be an old woman, Marion Crane’s fate is revealed by the blood at her feet flowing down to the drain, which itself transforms into a close up of her dead eyeball.  Calmly and methodically, Norman arrives on the scene to clean up what appears to be his mother’s evil deeds.  In a surprisingly long wordless sequence, as we watch Norman clean up the blood and eventually dump the body and car in a nearby swamp, like a pernicious bug or parasite that needs a new body to infest, the focus of our attention has transferred from Marion Crane to Norman Bates.

When Marion doesn’t return to work, her sister Lila (Vera Miles) is called, and she suspects Marion ran away to her boyfriend Sam, but when he hasn’t heard from her either, the two team up, enlisting the aid of a private investigator, Arbogast (Martin Balsam), who after visiting several motels from the vicinity pays Norman a visit, noticing something strange about him right away, particularly Norman’s nervous behavior and the way his story keeps changing, eventually shifting to his mother, but then he wouldn’t allow anyone to see her, as she’s too ill.  This sets a series in motion, as Arbogast calls Lila and reports the news, explaining he’ll try again to speak to the mother and be back within the hour.  When things don’t go as planned, as unbeknownst to them, Arbogast goes searching for the mother in the mansion behind the motel and is caught unawares at the top of the stairs by Norman’s knife-wielding mother.  They turn to the sheriff for help, who explains that Norman’s mother was killed ten years ago in a traumatic incident that has left Norman something of a recluse, as he was the one who discovered her dead body.  But when Arbogast never returns and the Sheriff accepts Norman’s feeble explanations, Lila and Sam head to the Bates Motel to sign in as guests in order to explore the scene themselves.  What they discover drives poor Norman to his wits end, as he fears he has to defend his unprotected mother, but the tables are turned.  Norman is caught attempting to attack them, wearing an old granny dress and wig, blade in hand. 

The wrap up takes place at the police station, an attempt for humans to scientifically explain to themselves how these events could occur, as a police psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) rationally explains Norman has a split personality, that he is a homicidal, cross-dressing schizophrenic, suggesting it was a struggle these past ten years as to which would be the dominant force, between Norman as his mother, the knife wielding murderer dressed up as his dead mother who arrives on the scene anytime Norman is threatened or his sexual passions are aroused, or Norman the benevolent and protective son who cleans up after his mother.  These current events attest to who won that battle, as Norman has all but disappeared, replaced by the surly malicious intolerance of his mother.  The look on Jack Nicholson’s face in Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980), or on Vincent D'Onofrio’s face in FULL METAL JACKET (1987), is the same look that Anthony Perkins originated at the end of PSYCHO, where there is little doubt that whatever truly motivated these murders lies beyond the ability of rational minds to comprehend.  The public reaction to the film was staggering, with people lining up around the block for tickets, where Hitchcock amusingly added to the buzz by implementing a special theater policy where no one would be allowed to enter the theater after the opening credits had run.

Note – Hitchcock appears about 4 minutes into the film wearing a cowboy hat outside Marion Crane’s office.