Counter-Currents
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John Ford’s last great film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) enjoys the status of a classic. I find it a deeply flawed, grating, and often ridiculous film that is nonetheless redeemed both by raising intellectually deep issues and by an emotionally powerful ending that seems to come out of nowhere.
The stars of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, both fine actors given the impossible job of playing men in their 20s, even though they were aged 54 and 53 at the time. It just doesn’t work.
There’s also too much buffoonery. Ford thought that drunkards and men with funny voices were hilarious. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, we get two funny drunkards and three men with funny voices, including Andy Devine and Strother Martin. There is also a great deal of scene-chewing overacting and overbroad parody that often seem downright cartoonish.
The film is poorly paced as well, burning through screen time and my patience with dramatically needless details of frontier kitchens and political conventions.
Beyond these lapses of taste, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance also contains Left-liberal messages on race. For instance, Devine’s Marshal Link Appleyard is married to a Mexican woman. Oddly enough, the same actor’s character in Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) is married to a Mexican as well. In real life, Any Devine was married to a white woman. Bucking the color bar must have been Ford’s preference.
Wayne’s character Tom Doniphan has a loyal negro sidekick named Pompey (Woody Strode). Pompey even endures the indignity of being refused service at the saloon, but Doniphan stands up for him, although he does refer to him as “my boy Pompey.”
At the very center of the film is a scene in which newly-minted lawyer Ransom Stoddard (Stewart) teaches reading and civics to a class of white adults, plus Pompey and a brood of Mexican children. (All the children in Shinbone are nonwhite, a poignant sign that white civilization has not yet been established there. Now such classrooms are signs of white civilization in decline.) Lawyer Stoddard teaches that the fundamental law of the land is the Declaration of Independence, which holds that “All men are created equal.” The Declaration, of course, is not the fundamental law of the land. That would be the Constitution, which says nothing about all men being created equal.
Ford was known as a patriot and an anti-Communist, but on race, his politics were aligned with the Hollywood progressive consensus. Ford did not, however, identify with outsiders against America’s WASP ethnic core because he was Jewish. Instead, he did so as an Irish Catholic, born John Martin Feeney.
Judging from Ford’s cavalry trilogy — Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950) — the West could not have been won without the help of golden-hearted, silver-tongued Irish drunkards. These stereotypes seem rather broad and offensive today, but Ford — a heavy drinker himself — obviously regarded them affectionately and thought their inclusion to be progressive.
I list these problems up front, because I don’t want you to be surprised or deterred by them. For in spite of its flaws, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a worthwhile film. As the title suggests, this is a movie about violence, specifically the relationship of violence to manliness and civilization. The film’s message is deeply anti-liberal. Indeed, although Ford could not have known it, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance illustrates many of Carl Schmitt’s criticisms of liberalism. Thus I include it in my series of Classics of Right-Wing Cinema.
The movie opens with a train pulling into the town of Shinbone in an unnamed state in the American Southwest. Shinbone is conspicuously bright, clean, and attractive. Everything looks brand-new. The only thing old and dusty is the stagecoach, a victim of progress suitably abandoned at the undertaker’s parlor. Shinbone was built on a soundstage. Ford was known for shooting on location because he loved sweeping vistas and gritty authenticity. But Shinbone’s cleanliness and newness — its clear artificiality — were quite deliberate representations of progress and the end of the frontier.
Senator Ransom Stoddard and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) are met by the former Marshal, Link Appleyard. They have arrived to attend the funeral of their old friend Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), who is being interred in a pauper’s grave at public expense. As a sign of the changes in Shinbone, we learn that Doniphon will not be buried with his gun, because he had not carried one in years. When the local newspaper editor demands to know why a sitting Senator is attending the funeral of a pauper, Stoddard agrees to tell the tale.
We flash back some decades. Ransom “Rance” Stoddard, fresh out of law school, has gone West, not so much to seek fame and fortune as to improve the place by bringing law, literacy, and progress from back East. Outside a much rougher version of Shinbone, the stagecoach in which Stoddard is riding is robbed by outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and his gang (including Lee Van Cleef and Strother Martin). When Stoddard objects to the rough treatment of a woman, Valance beats him severely then sends away the coach, leaving him to his fate.
Played to cartoonish excess by Lee Marvin, Liberty Valance is a cold-blooded murderer and thief. He’s also a drunkard and a petty bully. The entire town of Shinbone lives in terror of him. He’s the kind of man who needs killing, so decent people can plant crops, raise children, and sleep at night.
It seems odd that an American movie would have a villain named Liberty. Isn’t America the land of liberty? But Liberty Valance is not really an American. He’s a man of the Wild West. America is a Republic with laws. The West is the state of nature. Liberty Valance represents the liberty of savages in the state of nature, where one man’s liberty is exercised at the expense of another’s. Savage liberty must die so civil liberty can be born. Thus it is appropriate that Liberty Valance is a hired gun of the cattle interests, who oppose statehood and the coming of law and order.
Stoddard is rescued by Tom Doniphon, who owns a small horse ranch outside Shinbone, and brought into town. For no sensible reason except that he likes her, Tom awakens Hallie, who works as a waitress at a local eatery, to help tend to Stoddard’s wounds.
Tom quickly pegs Rance as a greenhorn and a tinhorn. He doesn’t know how the world works, but he talks like he does. When Tom tells Rance that he’d better get a gun if he wants justice, Rance launches into a speech:
But do you know what you’re saying to me? You’re saying just exactly what Liberty Valance said. What kind of community have I come to? You all seem to know Liberty Valance. He’s a no-good, gun-packing, murdering thief, but the only advice you give me is to carry a gun. Well, I’m a lawyer! Ransom Stoddard, Attorney at Law. And the law is the only . . .
Jimmy Stewart was brilliant casting because he’s obviously in love with his own voice.
You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Part Four of the Trilogy here.
Rance doesn’t see any difference between force used by criminals and force used by decent men against criminals. He’s an idealist who apparently thinks the laws can magically enforce themselves. In John Wayne’s most often-imitated line, Tom calls Rance “Pilgrim,” which pretty much sums up his combination of moralism and utopianism. He’s a spindly, priggish, progressive zealot. He reminds me of Barack Obama.
Rance settles in Shinbone, working alongside Hallie in the kitchen of the eatery owned by Swedish immigrants Nora and Peter Ericson. Rance’s role in the community, however, is distinctly feminine. In a land where men wear guns and settle problems for themselves, he refuses to wear a gun and expects the law to settle disputes . . . somehow. Thus in the Ericsons’ restaurant, Rance wears an apron while washing dishes and occasionally waiting tables. (Obama also allowed himself to be photographed in an apron.) When Rance learns that Hallie can’t read, he takes on another stereotypically female role: schoolmarm.
When an apron-clad Rance brings Tom his dinner in the restaurant, Liberty trips him then mocks him. Tom is enraged. It is his steak, after all. Tom demands that Liberty pick it up. Tom is the toughest guy in town, the only one who is not afraid of Liberty. A gunfight almost ensues until Rance, still clad in an apron, picks up the steak for them, ranting about the absurdity of men killing one another over matters of pride. This too is an attitude more commonly associated with women. Ford clearly thinks that manliness is connected with a willingness to fight over matters of honor.
Rance begins to have some doubts, however, when it becomes clear that the local law enforcement, Marshal Appleyard, is a fat, effeminate coward. Devigne’s squeaky voice is well-employed, but Ford labors the point endlessly, to the point of cartoonishness.
When Rance allies with the local newspaper editor, funny drunk Dutton Peabody (Edmond O’Brien), to fight the cattle barons and appeal for statehood, Liberty is hired by the ranchers to intimidate the townspeople. At that point, Rance furtively buys a gun and sneaks off to practice shooting. Why the deception? Because he can’t really reconcile it with his self-image and the image he has established with the public.
There’s also a love triangle in the mix. Tom is in love with Hallie. Everybody sees it. But he hasn’t screwed up the courage to propose. It is his one failure of nerve as a man. When Rance enters the picture, Hallie begins by tending his wounds like a mother. Then she works with him in the kitchen like a sister (both in aprons). Then he schoolmarms her along with a brood of Mexican children. Rance is pretty much zilch as a man, certainly nobody Tom would regard as a rival. But when Hallie begs Tom to stop Rance from getting himself killed in a duel over honor, the big lug realizes that he is in danger of losing his girl.
When Rance (still wearing his apron) faces Liberty Valance, Liberty toys with him, shooting a jar first, then wounding his arm, then taunting him to pick up the gun again. Rance does so, takes aim, and shoots Liberty dead. Hallie rushes to tend Rance’s wounds. But Rance is no longer a child. He has faced death in a duel over honor. He’s a man now. When Tom sees them together, he knows that he has lost Hallie. He gets staggering drunk and burns his own house down in self-pity.
Rance Stoddard enjoyed some esteem for his good heart and his skills as a teacher and a lawyer. But his refusal to carry a gun put him in the category of women and children when it came to defending the community. However, when he shot Liberty Valance, he became a man and a hero. It also launched his political career.
But none of this sits well with Rance’s puritanical idealist streak. He feels that he bears the “mark of Cain” and is perhaps unworthy of public office. So Tom takes him aside and tells him a story. Tom was watching the confrontation with Liberty, and when Rance raised his gun to fire, Tom shot Liberty dead with a rifle. Tom is willing to take the guilt — and also the glory — to salve Rance’s morbid conscience. “It was cold-blooded murder,” says Tom. “But I can live with it.” It is telling that Rance can’t live with killing in self-defense.
I wonder, though, if Tom’s story is even true. Did it really happen, or did he make it up to spare Rance’s feelings? True or false, Tom is astonishingly generous. If the story is true, Tom saved Rance’s life and lost the woman he loved in the bargain. If the story is false, Tom is admitting to murder simply to make Rance feel better, perhaps because he hopes to promote Hallie’s happiness even after losing her.
This is an enormous risk for Tom. If Rance shot Liberty, it was self-defense. But if Tom killed Liberty, he could hang for it. For Tom’s sake, Rance is forced to keep the secret. Oddly enough, his conscience allows him to return to politics, where he enjoys an illustrious career: Governor, Senator, Ambassador to England. Granted, he no longer thinks his public esteem is based on killing, but shouldn’t he be bothered that it is based on a lie? Perhaps he can live with the lie by telling himself that he is doing good things for the people. But couldn’t he say the same thing about killing Liberty Valance?
The deeper truth that Rance evades is that, for civilization to come to the West, somebody needed to shoot Liberty Valance. It doesn’t really matter who. When Dutton Peabody nominates Rance to represent the territory in Washington, he explains how the West was won. First, it was held by merciless Indian savages. Then it was settled by cattlemen, whose law was the gun. The cattlemen did what was necessary, namely kill and subjugate the Indians. Then came the farmers and businessmen, who need fences and law and order. Liberty Valance is a hired gun of the cattle interests. His type was necessary to deal with the Indians. But now he has outlived his usefulness and stands in the way of progress. Progress requires a new kind of man: Ransom Stoddard, attorney at law. And isn’t it poetic that Rance Stoddard is the man who shot Liberty Valance?
The possibility that the story is false is supported by Ford’s frank exploration of noble and ignoble lies later in the movie. Although the newspaper editor has pried the story out of Rance by insisting on his “right to the truth,” once the tale is told, he burns his notes and tells Rance he will not print the truth. “This is the West, Sir,” he says, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” What he really means is when facts are replaced by legend, print the legend.
But why replace the truth with legend? What’s wrong with the truth? The superficial truth deals with who shot Liberty Valance: Tom or Rance? If Tom shot Liberty, he can’t be punished now because he’s dead. Rance, of course, kept the secret. Perhaps there would be legal consequences for that. But the real need for deception has to do with the deeper truth: somebody needed to shoot Liberty Valance so that civilization could come to the West, just as the Liberty Valances of the world were needed to shoot the Indians. This truth needs to be concealed because it does not sit well with liberalism.
Liberalism seeks to do away with force and fraud in human affairs. This is a noble aspiration shared by anti-liberal thinkers as well. Liberal theorists are famous for constructing accounts of how civil order can arise from the state of nature without force or fraud, by means of a social contract between rational agents. It is only because liberals think that political legitimacy depends on the immaculate conception of liberal order, without resort to force and fraud, that they are forced to print the legend. Liberalism does not banish force from politics, and especially from the foundation of political order. It merely banishes honesty about force.
Rance Stoddard is a brilliant and scathing portrait of liberalism. When Rance’s priggish, effeminate idealism clashes with the grim reality of the state of nature, Tom Doniphon needs to rescue him again and again. If Rance really shot Liberty Valance, it was only by discarding his initial belief that there is no difference between Liberty and Tom — and only by taking Tom’s advice to buy a gun. If Tom shot Liberty Valance, the repudiation of liberalism is even deeper, for Rance has the law on his side but isn’t up to the task of defeating Liberty, so Tom has to commit cold-blooded murder.
Liberalism, in short, depends on illiberal men and extralegal violence for its very survival. But, instead of questioning their own ideological premises, liberals simply lie about this fact. Ford doesn’t dispute the benefits of law and order. He just thinks they would be better secured by men who are more honest about the role of violence in founding and maintaining them.
This is an amazing message for a Hollywood film. I have no doubt that this is Ford’s intended meaning. Everything about this film, both its virtues and its flaws, is 100% John Ford. He was one of Hollywood’s most meticulous auteurs, a fact that is somewhat hidden by the formulaic quality of all his films. Ford started making movies in the silent era, when they were everyone’s entertainment, which meant that every film had to have something for everyone, including a love story and some crude comic relief, usually involving booze. Of course one could level the same sort of criticisms at Shakespeare.
I chalk the film’s flaws up to the self-indulgence of old age. Ford was pushing 70, and his hard-working, hard-drinking life was catching up with him. Perhaps we can credit the film’s virtues to another trait of old age: impatience, because time is short, which leads to greater frankness, even though it might ruffle some folks’ feathers.
I don’t want to spoil the movie’s brilliant and heartbreaking final scene, so I will leave you with these words. Since men like Liberty Valance need killing to create political order, nothing is too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance. It is a burning indictment of liberalism that such men lie unsung and unstoried in paupers’ graves.
The Unz Review, March 25, 2021
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24 comments
I’m glad you did a review of this film. A lot of the issues you have with this film (which are certainly fair) I find to be more grating in some of Ford’s other works that are actually beloved and maybe even more so beloved by fans of his than this film. Films such as Rio Grande (the third installment of the ‘Cavalry Trilogy’) and The Quiet Man really have all those negatives you can find in Liberty Valance turned up to 11 without the amazing commentary that Valance has embedded in it.
“Judging from Ford’s cavalry trilogy — Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950) — the West could not have been won without the help of golden-hearted, silver-tongued Irish drunkards.”
lol So true…
The age thing you touched on to me was actually the biggest drawback but I think the black and white helps dull that effect a bit. And really, wrinkles aside, Wayne and Stewart were perfect for these roles. And while I certainly think that Ford flirts a little too much with maudlin tropes in general along with plain old cartoonish silliness, I didn’t really mind those ‘Fordian’ features so much in this film, for some reason. Maybe because it all feels so much like straight-up political allegory along the lines of “this town ain’t…” and the characters are so representative of larger ideas as opposed to ‘character studies’.
So with that said, I personally loved Lee Marvin hamming it up as Liberty Valance. It worked for me. Ditto with Edmond O’Brien’s ‘loud’ portrayal of Dutton Peabody. They all represent something really large, in my mind. So I don’t mind them being a bit one note and turned up loud.
Even the goofy scene where they were selecting delegates:
“This concludes…”
“Well then, the bar’s open!”
*cue to camera shot of rowdy drunks throwing themselves at the bar counter with trite saloon music blaring*
Very silly but I think forgivable given what the film is trying to illustrate.
The race stuff definitely seems dated now and forced but wasn’t really too big of a deal to me, personally. The film just in general is definitely no Searchers in terms of subtlety and irony (no character comes close to approaching Ethan Edwards’ depth) but it does have overall ‘thematic’ depth despite some of the piety and tropes that now in 2021 induce an eye roll or two.
There are just so many scenes that seem simplistic and may even reek of ‘silly’ John Wayne bravado that I think have a lot of ‘there’ there. Like the steak scene you mentioned.
“Pick it up, dude.”
“No Valance! I say you! YOU pick it up!”
I love how a guy like Stoddard doesn’t ‘get’ the issue, there. Or he might get it, but he doesn’t *really* ‘get it’ get it.
The film really is a scathing critique of liberalism on some level although there a few ways you could probably interpret this film’s meaning. (There’s definitely this idea in the film that we romanticize what era we’re not presently living in; young Hallie romanticizes civilization and then once she has it, goes back to romanticizing the West and fully appreciating a ‘cactus rose’. So there’s a lot going on, I think.) But how you summed it up is definitely the what I think Ford himself was also getting at in terms of the contradiction embedded in liberalism.
I might also be more forgiving of some of the flaws that others picked out on account of this being my first non-spaghetti western that I really sat through. A lot of the tropes and cliches probably weren’t as grating for me as they would be for others by virtue of that fact.
Brilliant review.
It makes me reflect on all of the essentially good, honest, idealistic men (men of honor) who gave their lives in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, from the American Civil War right up to our current never ending “war on terror”, all in the name of this putrid lie called liberal democracy.
All the Tom Doniphons who have taken bullets in both domestic and foreign lands so that the apron wearing Rance Stoddards and Barack Obamas can crown their self righteous egos with their sanctimonious moral preening.
Excellent review. I saw this film years ago—all I remember is Stewart in an apron. I’ll put it on my queue.
Ford didn’t start ‘the big bad bully beat by the skinny kid’—that goes back to David and Goliath’ but I discerned two other devices which I wonder if he originated: that of the White Knight coming to the defense of the Negro being denied dignity, and that of the happy, interracial marriage. Fifteen or so years later these both appeared in TV shows like ‘Wagon Train’ and ‘Bonanza’ as well as other films.
Maybe I am as much of a rube as Rance Stoddard, but I can count on one hand the number of films that have moved me, and this is one of them.
I don’t like bullies. We have let in a big bully called the Left and he likes to yank Western people around. I don’t care who shoots him, just get rid of him.
The “getting rid of the bully” theme became the basis of the later wildly successful spaghetti westerns. It has always been a morally compelling theme.
As for “liberalism seeks to do away with force and fraud in human affairs”, well, the whole starting-point of Liberalism and Leftism generally is the fiction that Man is an infinitely malleable Blank Slate. And is “naturally good” as well. Both are the false legends of our time, but unfortunately the Left keeps printing them instead of the facts.
James Stewart playing the “liberal” in Liberty Valance is fun when you consider his “apparent dislike of black people” that made the rounds during the Civil Rights era. It might be seen as more than “apparent” now. He did not politely sit back and stay a Goodwhite:
…In 1971 he shocked NBC by demanding that black actor Hal Williams be removed from his TV program The Jimmy Stewart Show. ‘Blacks are bossing white people all over the country’, raged Stewart to NBC producer Hal Kanter. ‘And now we’re going to have the same damn thing on prime time television? A black is going to be lecturing me with millions of people watching? No way. I get casting approval and Williams is out’. Back in 1961, while Jimmy was shooting The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, rumors of him racially slurring fellow actor Woody Strode were smoothed over by director John Ford. Everybody assumed it was a storm in a teacup. Well, everybody but Woody, anyway….”
https://filmstarfacts.com/2015/03/01/james-stewart-1908-1997/
If Jimmy thought ‘Blacks are bossing white people all over the country’ back in 71, he’d be amazed by what would be happening 50 years later.
WTF I love Jimmy Stewart now.
You just pushed my esteem for Jimmy Stewart through the stratosphere!
Lee Marvin’s character was great, perhaps even Oscar nomination worthy!
I generally agree with Greg’s review, especially about the maudlin sentimentality, tiresome buffoonery, & the vastly exaggerated role of the Irish, including in the post Civil War, frontier army.
However, intermarriage between whites & Mexicans was not uncommon, especially in early frontier days. The main reason was the scarcity of white women – there were almost none, & most of the early arrivals were whores. Although their numbers are exaggerated by anti-white activists today, Mexicans, including a fair number of decent women, were well established in many of these areas before the arrival of white settlers. Also, frontier communities have always been predominantly male. At an earlier stage of American history, intermarriage with Indian women had not been uncommon east of the Mississppi, under frontier conditions. So it was a matter of who was available to marry. In most far western territories, the population did not become sexually balanced until after statehood, in the early 20th century. Therefore, showing the white sheriff (Andy Devine) married to a mestiza is not inaccurate for the time. Intermarriage actually became less common after white women arrived in large numbers. Finally, remember there was never a formal – legal – “color line” between Hispanics/Mexicans, and whites, as there was between blacks & whites. Indeed some Mexicans were – racially – white, or almost white.
This review, with its headache-inducing degree of nitpicking, reads rather like all the tiresome and grim progressive summaries that foolishly fault vintage films for not being in sync with “modern sensibilities”. C’mon, Trevor, the film is a product of its time … a better time, and should remain above such silliness. It’s a lively tale from the fading days of the Old West, rendered by a master, and it stirs the imagination in a manner unmatched by any of the directors of screen westerns in the decades since. It made quite an impact on the culture at the time, too. Shortly after the film’s release, Gene Pitney’s recorded an excellent “story-song” based on the movie and it promptly became a solid top ten hit. A motion picture is generally considered worthwhile if it achieves just one of three noble goals: to entertain, enlighten or inspire … a true classic manages to do all three. Given the well-textured plot and period setting, I’d say “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” handily meets this demanding standard. Just open your mind to the concept that these screen characters are who they are, doing what they do. Let the story unfold and take away from the finished tale the insights that have value and quietly dismiss what appears to be folly. The same way you would do for any real-life daily events. Trying to gripe about this element or that not jiving with your current-day personal code is trite and, quite frankly, shamefully egocentric.
I think John Ford’s The Searchers might be the most perfect film ever made. I can still find fault with it. Easily, in fact. Even though I love it to pieces.
And The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance would make a short list for me as well, easily. But I think identifying areas where it’s a bit weak (nitpicking, if you will) relative to its strengths doesn’t render it any less of a classic. I’ve shown this film to friends of mine who love old films like Citizen Kane and Sunset Blvd. and they still pick up on these very same…uh…issues as well. Nitpicking is fun, really. It’s how we dissect and understand art (good and bad) and its significance. It’s not sacred esoteric religious text. It’s there for us to understand and relate to and even question and criticize.
There are some features about Valance that date it to the 1960s. Because it’s obvious that Ford is doing the 1960s version of virtue signalling with Pompey’s presence in the film, unfortunately. It’s not a major thing; but pointing it out is certainly a legitimate criticism. The stuff the left gets mad about such as 1940s directors not knowing ahead of time to insert futuristic racial anachronisms into their pictures in order to soothe people’s egos in 2021 is in no way comparable to someone nitpicking about Ford’s heavy-handed racial theme with Pompey in Liberty Valance. At best, that whole dead-end tangent that goes no where is a moralistic DISTRACTION from the main driving plot of the film.
You’re right. John Ford is a master. Masters like Orson Welles have called him a master. So it’s not really too much in dispute. But all directors have tendencies that people can make valid nitpicks about, I think. Ford really does tend to smack you over the head with sentimentality sometimes for better and sometimes less so.
A lot is being made here of Woody Strode’s role being too deliberate and contrived. The ironic thing is that Strode pretty much WAS “Pompey” to Ford in real life, spending months sleeping on his floor and tending to him when he was in ill health. This brand of loyalty was born of the fact that Ford had long defended Woody in public and demanded that others show him respect. So the character and circumstances depicted were actually rooted in truth. Unless a film presents a downright historical “lie” or provable misrepresentation, there’s really nothing substantial to “officially” nitpick. Everyone’s entitled to a personal opinion, but the phrase, “keep your opinions to yourself'” exists for a reason. Too many pompous blowhards believe it’s their duty to dissect and interpret things that don’t require that treatment. Film characters, for good or ill, are entitled to be as deluded, staunch, violent or squishy as they want to be … that’s who they are by virtue of their creators. Criticizing them for what looks to a current viewer to be a “liberal lapse in judgement” is about on par with the modern day cancel culture cretins trying to condemn or punish someone for “wrong-think”. It’s pretty ridiculous for anyone to spend hours concocting a litany of sins regarding a film from which any random isolated 60 second clip is superior to a dozen current feature length presentations (Just born of the stellar and irreplaceable cast alone). The whole notion of dubbing any non-political film as “right wing cinema” is a pretty cornball device to boot. Rather than feverishly scratching around looking for microscopic “gotcha” elements in a truly classic film, why not go where the gold is and do a review for a film that’s just brimming with unforgivable flaws … like say, “Meatballs 3 : Summer Job”? That title alone should keep any critically compelled soul occupied for at least a month or two.
Sandra,
I appreciate the back and forth. I don’t think we’ll likely see to eye on this subject so this will be my last reply and if you have anything to write in response, I’ll let you have the last word.
“A lot is being made here of Woody Strode’s role being too deliberate and contrived. The ironic thing is that Strode pretty much WAS “Pompey” to Ford in real life, spending months sleeping on his floor and tending to him when he was in ill health.”
That’s all well and good but that doesn’t change how something comes across to an audience. Real life circumstances can actually be re-packaged into something that comes across as contrived to a general audience absorbing the fictional version of it. The writing in question doesn’t just become magically less contrived by virtue of being able to dig into the director’s biography after the fact and find out that– low and behold, he really did have a Pompey, himself! That’s neither here nor there when talking about the film itself and how it’s structured.
A lot of that Pompey stuff was a distraction from the main narrative, I thought. And it felt very forced to me when Doniphon insisted that Pompey should be able to drink the bar after the shooting. It did to others, too. We’re not all crazy. Does it ruin the film? Absolutely not. But it was virtue signalling by 1960s standards, absolutely. And that’s fine. Whatever. But I see it for it was. It takes me out of the film slightly for that one instant. Maybe for others like yourself it enhances the film. But for a lot of us it doesn’t. It’s obviously a bit subjective. But there is something there that is shoehorned, regardless.
I’m sure a lot of white people really do have similar stories about blacks as those reflected in The Help or Driving Miss Daisy; I know some whites who have such stories about dutiful blacks tolerating spoiled whites; it doesn’t mean people are wrong to groan at the contrived moral pretenses of that film, though.
“Criticizing them for what looks to a current viewer to be a “liberal lapse in judgement” is about on par with the modern day cancel culture cretins trying to condemn or punish someone for “wrong-think”.”
No, it’s not. No one here (that I see, anyways) is condemning this film much less asking for it to be banned or canceled or whatever the word for that is. I LOVE this film. But I can still critique it beyond saying “it’s perfect.” It’s because I love it so much that I’m able to critique down to such a minute detail. If I hated it, I wouldn’t bother ‘nitpicking’ at it. I’d just say “it all sucks” and move on.
“The whole notion of dubbing any non-political film as “right wing cinema” is a pretty cornball device to boot.”
No, it’s not. The film is deeply anti-liberal in a way. Even if Ford wasn’t intending for the film to be “political” or “right wing” in some literal “Fox News” vs. “CNN” sort of way, the film has a message behind it that is inherently problematic for liberals. In fact, most westerns outside of Dances With Wolves or Little Big Man and most mythical hero adventure stories that follow the Joseph Campbell model pretty much present the similar issues for left wing intellectuals.
I mean, almost all art or pop culture works this way where it’s oriented in one philosophical political direction whether the creator is conscious of that fact or not. Star Trek, for example, is inherently left wing. I still think it’s a great show that can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of their politics. But that doesn’t mean the core of the show isn’t oriented towards a “left wing” philosophical outlook.
So John Ford was an Irish jew, and like all jews he couldn’t resist being a subversive in his old age–especially when he got the green light from the “power elite” after WWII. Ford promoted miscegenation in the following films: “Stagecoach;” “The Searchers;” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance;” “Donovan’s Reef;” and his pièce de résistance “Sergeant Rutledge.” In some of these films he also promoted the “noble savage” myth. These are just the films I am aware of, we would have to view each of his films to sound the depths of his chicanery.
He wasn’t a Jew, he was a Catholic.
“… he was Jewish. Instead, he did so as an Irish Catholic, born John Martin Feeney. ”
That–is from the text of the article, maybe I read it wrong–that has been known to happen! I must respectfully quote Revilo P. Oliver, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck–it must be a duck.”
As to the recurring miscegenation, and noble savage motifs; “Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; twice is planned.”
Then, there is the fact that he allowed Woody Strode to live with him while he was sick–would you do that? No, you wouldn’t, no matter how sick you became. Of course, I concede that we live in different times, and I could be wrong–as always I must most respectfully disagree.
I meant “trice is planned.”
I meant “thrice is planned.”
You and I have very different definitions of “promoted miscegenation.”
In TMWSLV, Pompey is basically a tool or a bodyguard. He’s not even presented as someone with romantic or lustful feelings much less as someone even paired up with another human being let alone a white woman. The two love interests in the film for Hallie are both white men (Wayne and Stewart).
The Searchers has miscegenation but I’m not sure if it’s fair to say he “promoted” it. To the extent that it’s even a feature of that film, it’s used to further highlight the tragedy of racial conflict. I mean, you have MULTIPLE sympathetic characters in that film that basically think and say “it’s better to be dead than violated by a savage.” That’s not Ford’s point of view, obviously. But he does show people with such views in a very sympathetic light. Not exactly very Jewish of him, really.
I just realized on TMWSLV you were probably referring to Andy Devine’s character on the subject of miscegenation. I mean, I’ll give you that one.
But that being said, he’s the biggest loser in the film. The biggest loser is rolling around in the muck with Mexican women while the two white winners fight for Hallie. I don’t quite see that as some Jewish ad to mix it up, exactly. I saw it more as that was all that fat loser could get. Interpretations will vary; but I don’t think miscegenation was glorified or made ‘sexy’ by that film in the slightest.
“Ford doesn’t dispute the benefits of law and order. He just thinks they would be better secured by men who are more honest about the role of violence in founding and maintaining them.”
Well, let’s consider the role of contract law in development of market economy.
Without the enforcement of it by governemnt-sponsored law our economic system would be impotent (unless you think that “Wild West” practices would make up for it), and so our modern civilization as we know it.
To blame historical liberal democracy for the evil of law and order is not convincing. After all, we made 300 years of civilizational progress, leaving behind primitive feudalism, exactly because liberal democracy did not believe in “naturally good” Man.
It is my understanding, standing on the shoulders of giants, that the rule of law is dead in USA in particular, and in the western world in general (Supreme Court judges refusing to review election fraud in some states in 2020 except one black judge, government prosecutors reaching 99% conviction rate except in and around Wall Street, police storming private homes without a warrant, etc – examples of force/violence by other means by gov representatives, presumably what Ford would like, if you believe this movie’s interpretation).
That’s why the good old USA will become beloved “Wild West” once gain (COVID circus showed how ridiculously fragile it already is), and others will pull the wagon of civilization for long time to come.
The cowboys (“All hats, no cows”) still do not get it.
It is only because liberals think that political legitimacy depends on the immaculate conception of liberal order, without resort to force and fraud, that they are forced to print the legend.
I frequently have to listen to liberals beating their breasts and tearing their purple hair over the Winning of the West: the European conquest of Indian territories, the White Man’s broken treaties, the (very rare) massacres, the destruction of herds of roaming buffalo.
One can counter by pointing out: (a) all this was pretty much mild when you consider how most countries have been built, (b) that the Indians themselves were ruthless when it suited their own purposes, and (c) if there were no Winning of the West, there would be no USA and then where would all those West Coast Liberals be today?
Standard liberal response: “We don’t care!”
Cue guilt trip memes.
Which brings me to my point.
Consider the nationwide mayhem perpetuated during and in the aftermath of the 2020 BLM/antifa uprising, all fully supported by the liberal establishment:
* the arson, looting and physical assaults
* the destruction of statues and memorials
* the cancelling of American culture and history prior to Anno 2020
* the takeover of public spaces and staking them out as autonomous zones
* and the solidification of their coup via totalitarian style indoctrination and the repression of dissenters, notably the railroading of the Patriots of 6 January 2021
But when this is all pointed out, the standard liberal response is: “It was mostly peaceful protesters and, anyway, it was all the fault of ‘White Supremacists’!”
i.e., liberals refuse to recognize their own mass employment of force and fraud to birth their new multicultist nation. (Which brings in a movie reference for another time…)
Now, there is a real disconnect here. If liberals can not recognize their own tactics, then they are operating on a plane other than that of hard headed reality…a sure tactical vulnerability. And such vulnerabilities can be exploited by a countervailing movement that understands the realities of power.
Let’s close with an observation from James Burnham: “Liberal ideology has by now got so far out of touch with fact that through its lens it has become impossible to see reality, much less act positively on reality.”
Something to think about in the continuing chaos…
I made a much more detailed reply to this in Unz Review, but the high points are that the movie is a standard, competent study of using force versus law. It’s a constant western theme, and the film seems a rehash of High Noon, with Rance a version of Grace Kelly’s Quaker.
An excellent study of the western was written by Walter Karp, What Western Movies Are All About (Horizon magazine, summer, 1975), where he says the western is a study of political tyranny versus civic helplessness, restating themes used by Machiavelli on city states weakened by the loss of civic virtue, and Madison’s theory of democracy needing a strong defender whose interests coincide with the good of the people. Counter Currents should reprint it.
Stewart is a talky Rance. if Gregory Peck had played him, the role would have had a different texture. Interesting how Wayne’s Doniphon is the underlying force in the movie, like the Searchers (Doniphon protects the town, but lives outside of it…never quite part of Shinbone), and recalling the film, it had a great cast.
As for comments of race mixing With Andy Devine marrying a Mexican and not a white woman…would YOU marry Andy Devine??
As it is, the film has a strong cast. It’s not my pick of a great film, but a solid western. ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’ A great line.
It is interesting how Ford, after building up the western, pretty much turned on it later. Same With the cavalry. Compare his John Wayne trilogy with Cheyenne Autumn. The latter having much of the cold chill of the 1960’s revisionism blowing through it.
The contrast between civilization and independence recalls Alex Linder’s review of Ride With the Devil on the VNN site. You should read it.
I found this movie on Hulu, conveniently and prominently in my suggestions. I’m middle aged, and had seen this movie as a child…Most likely on Turner Broadcasting back in the day when that channel (does it still exist?) catered to young boomers and their retiring WW2 generation parents.
It was worth watching again, if for no other reason than to hear John Wayne call Jimmy Stewart “pilgrim.”
My thoughts were this:
Trevor Lynch’s review puts a strong “modern” political spin on the lawlessness of the west vs the civilizing efforts of men such as Rance Stoddard. Certainly Ford was making that contrast. It applied in the early 60s as a theme just as it does now.
However, I don’t think moviegoers of the early 1960s would have found John Wayne’s hyper-masculine character particularly remarkable. Certainly they idolized his various portrayals of such manly men. There was hardly a bigger star in the western or war genres. But it seems to me that effete men such as Stoddard would have been seen as the novel character, almost alien, to an early 60s audience.
I guess what I’m saying is that an unfortunate majority of millennial and zoomer men would have difficulties identifying with John Wayne. They would find his character to be brutish in a cartoonish kind of way, instead of “normal”.They may not be so feminized that wearing an apron would seem normal to them, but certainly helping in the kitchen and outsourcing “law and order” to stronger men would be a perfectly comfortable scenario for them.
I myself, as a Gen Xer, have an all-too-civilized attitude about conflict resolution. I own guns, and am proficient, but I have no desire to settle disputes with violence, because there’s a 50/50 chance of being the one put into a pine box.
Bottom line, it’s very sad that in 2021 that young audiences are only comfortable with superhuman comic book characters possessing the machismo to fight their own battles. I suspect this is why the western genre had its death throes in the 90s with movies like Tombstone and Young Guns.
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