The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

 And this week's Friday night movie has been... The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance!

Original image located here. Accessed 3rd November 2023

"He was the bravest of them allllllll......."

Once again, I tackle one of the westerns forged from the partnership between director John Ford and actor John Wayne. By all accounts, this was an unbeatable team, making some of the finest westerns ever committed to celluloid.

So it is indeed a surprise to see that this movie does things differently: it is shot in black and white and the location shooting is non-existent. These two elements are pretty much defined Ford's westerns so their absence is indeed striking. 
And one gets the impression that this is exactly the point: This movie is pretty much built around the notion of how the mythology of the wild west is built up and thrives. And it is therefore fitting that Ford is casting a critical eye to the westerns he crafted and the legend he, and Wayne, built up.

Keep in mind that this was made in the 1960s, where the western genre was on shaky ground: On one hand, the genre itself was falling fast out of favour and, on the other, in doing so it was perfectly positioned to be reinvented by the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and the nihilism of Sam Peckinpah. And in that sense, the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance seems to be the endpoint of the classic western that defined the decades prior. But that doesn't mean it is without merit. 
So yeah: An excellent western all around