My kids love the film. It is truly an underrated movie and not a "cult" movie. Those 3 stars shaped the movie, along with Vera Miles and Ed O Brien as Dutton. Complete cast of super talents.and I do believe that was a young LEE VAN CLEEF in his first role

@@luigivincenz3843 It was not his first role. Lee van Cleef had already had a role in High Noon (1952). It was very similiar to his part in Liberty Valence - both times he was second gun to the main villain.

And Woody Strode. The whole film just flies high. It was a Western but oh, so much more. The end of an era, the Wild West. A character study of all the main players. A master class in acting…and filmmaking. Shalom

But how can you forget that hardworking character actor, Carleton Young, who plays newspaper editor, Maxwell Scott. Carleton had roles in hundreds of movie-a guy who worked Hollywood as a regular job. And tv and some radio. He had a deep, booming voice. He got his stake in movie immortality. "This is the West sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." His personal life had a real Hollywood ending. He fell with renowned exotic dancer, Noel Toy [the Chinese Gypsy Rose Lee] at first sight. Captain Young married Noel in New York City for Christmas 1945. The photos had the cut line: Happy Noel!". And they stayed together until his death 40-some years later. She called him "my soldier boy" for the rest of his life. But you LA guys and gals, you go to "Hollywood Forever" Cemetery. Noel and Carleton are there, along with a memorial behind glass-an officer's cap, the figurines on top a wedding cake, photos and more. A little Hollywood ending. But real. The best kind.

@@thomasshoener2154 ""This is the West sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." One of the most underrated quotes in movie history.

Perfect casting down to Woody Strode, Strother Martin & Andy Devine.

@@scottsmith6631 Edmund O’Brien the newspaperman or John Qualen who ran the restaurant, etc, etc. Qualen was one of the great character actors who usually had a Scandinavian accent. He first worked for Ford in 1931 and was a memorable part of lots of his pictures after that. Besides John Ford pics, how about His Girl Friday, Casablanca, Anatomy of a Murder, Elmer Gantry and many, many more?

@jollypoorman, Good short review. You nailed it

@@brucekuehn4031 wow…..another cinephile. All great movies. His Girl Friday is one of my favorites. Strong woman lead. Dialogue being spit out like Machine Gun fire.

Him and ronald reagan also played hit men in reagan's final film before he entered politics.

Listening to great filmmakers and storytellers sharing their passion for other great filmmaking and storytelling is one of my favorite things.

Word!

And made every single one of them better simply by appearing. If there was just one scene with Lee Van Cleef in any western, without him even speaking, he could just smirk ... it's a better movie than it would have been without him.

And once he's paid, he always sees the job through...

Visually, yes, good clips from Ford's movie. But... WHAT was the point?

@@KutWriteWatch it again with the audio on.

ps hook me up with that friedkin and kermode commentary track for cruising pls!

Classic

Is there a video of norm talking about this movie? Would love to watch that

@@WeAllWumbo There is a public archive of the show norm macdonald live you can find on google. I do not remember which episode he mentions this film specifically but he talks about movies quite a lot on that old podcast. If I had to guess which one it was I would pick the Carl Reiner episode.

@@WeAllWumbo Let me know if you find it. i'd like to listen to it again.

The film is a metaphor of Ford's thoughts on the nature of the universe. Tom is God...the figure of the original Wild West Liberty is the serpent...a smart but vicious guy that intimidates and perverts the West for his own wants, control/power and enjoyment of torturing others. Hallie is The Bride....aka humanity that God loves deeply and wants a relationship with. Ranse is the mediator, the deliverer, the Christ. He brings with him the law, but applies the law to its real intent, not its letter. You see all this in the restaurant scene. Tom quietly watches and is on one side of the shot. Liberty is on the other side of the shot, bullying and frightening cowardly townsfolk. There's a post middle shot that cuts the frame. Ranse the man of law,acting as the lowly servant, brings out the burnt offering of Tom's steak...walking the center line. Liberty trips him spoiling the steak and ridiculing Stoddard. Tom sees Hallie showing concern and finally stands up. He's ready to finish Liberty once and for all. Ranse now on the floor against the post....a line between God and Serpent....takes the insult and places the steak upon the plate. Later Ranse teaches the town how to live and expect a respectful life, and teaches Callie how to read (the law). Rance finally confronts Liberty, but in the shadows Tom and Pompey (God and St Michael) shoot him down. Ranse (Ransom the price paid for salvation) is the hero, while Tom realizes his hope for a direct relationship with Hallie is over....burning the prepared cabin paradise while Pompey looks on without a word. The wild exciting pure West of Tom is over, just as that of the highwayman Liberty. It is now a world of civilization. Spielberg is a cultural Jew and typically won't see these things, or allude to them....even though the plot of the movie is taken from Isaiah.

Its implied she still loved him. The truth is Tom becomes uncentered and basically gives up like a damn fool. Honestly the film would have been so much better had Tom let things play out. Lol

@@spencerwilliams461 then Tom should have shot Liberty in the restaurant at the close of Act1. A 30 minute movie the end. Scarlett should have realized Rhett was her man in the library tantrum scene, not pined over scrawny weak Ashley, and not married Melanie's brother to make Ashley jealous and get into the Wilks house in Atlanta. She only realizes it after 4 loooong hours and ten onscreen years. Hamlet should have gone and avenged his father at the opening of Act2, and exposed his mother as a slut.....again not the stuff that creates Shakespeare's longest and often best reviewed play. Theater and metaphor sell tickets not pragmatic logic.

@@spencerwilliams461 I have to disagree. Hallie was in love with Rance because he represented what she craved, peace, stability and love. He was the future of the West. She loved Tom because he was what settled the west in its rougher days; but she knew that if she went with him there was no real future. In the end Tom was the kind of heroic figure that becomes forgotten except by the people he affected.

Nicely said. The truly sad part was that to promote that future he had to commit murder.

@@kuvasz5252 Except, it wasn't murder. Lee Marvin was about to kill Jimmy Stewart. Wayne used deadly force to prevent that murder, which made it a justifiable killing. Upon learning how he was saved by Wayne, Stewart called it murder -- and Wayne didn't disagree. But, it wouldn't have been considered a crime back then nor now.

@@DKWalser>>>> "Stewart called it murder -- and Wayne didn't disagree." That was an essential POV. The taming of the West and making it civilized such that even Tom Doniphon recognized the morality that he helped birth. That was to me the real tragedy of Doniphon, recognizing the world he lived in was disappearing and love lost yet believing that he could by killing Valence usher in a better day.

@@kuvasz5252 I don't disagree with that at all. Wayne's character in the movie was tragic. He could have let Valance kill Stoddard, thereby clearing the field for his romance of Hallie. He stopped Valance the only way he could, knowing that it would cost him any chance of winning Hallie's love. Yet, one suspects, under other circumstances, Tom would have stepped in to prevent a bully from murdering someone. He protects the weak. That's part of who he is at his core. So, saving Ransom Stoddard from Liberty Valance wasn't out of character for Tom Doniphon. Nor was it out of character for him to not claim credit for his work -- even if by claiming credit he could have earned Hallie's gratitude. He did't want her gratitude. He wanted her love. She never knew how much he really loved her. When he could have won her simply by NOT acting, when everything in him wanted to simply let Valance kill Stoddard, he acted knowing it would cost him any chance with Hallie. The tragedy is Tom never met, fell in love with, and married anyone else.

@@DKWalser and I don't disagree with that at all. We ought to meet somewhere and watch this movie.

Some of Wayne's best movies are the ones in which his "archetype" is questioned, disliked, or held to be out of date, yet at the same time, like in Liberty, to have been necessary for civilization just the same.

It depends what you think the archetype is. He often played deeply flawed, obsessive complex characters. Red River and The Searchers spring to mind.

@@DenkyManner The Searchers is a good example of what I mean - the cowboy who is a tough guy and is always right because he's John Wayne and the script says so.

It was admittedly an odd film for Ford. He'd always been an actor's director but he went into greater depth in character development than he had since, possibly, The Informant. Looking at it it's also easy to forget it was released in 1962. The shots were basic with none of the cinematic vistas from The Searchers and certainly looked more like something from the 1930-40s. Especially compared to the winner for that year Lawrence of Arabia. But I'd certainly rather have seen it at least nominated rather than some of the other films from that year like Mutiny on the Bounty of the Music Man, both of which were fine films but certainly haven't survived the test of time as well as Liberty Valance has.

I'd rate it #1 of the films I've seen, followed by The Searchers and Stagecoach.

You're a liberal Democrat

TOO...

"The Grapes Of Wrath" and "The Informer" are my favourites. "The Searchers" to me is ruined by Jeffrey Hunter, who is terrible in the film.

"Some" great westerns? Damn! the guy almost invented that film genre.

I would call The grapes of Wrath the last Western. The last as in it's the end of the West. The pioneers now have to leave. The Joads came west in a covered wagon and are now leaving in a truck. Like the Irish in the 1947 famine, the Jews in the pogroms, the Scottish in the clearances, all have to leave thier homelands but all of them were much better off when they arrived in the new place. Looking at history, the Joads arrived in California just as the second world war broke out and they all got jobs in the defence industries and had more money then they ever had before.

That's just it. He had about a dozen masterpieces.

Not the first great film lessened by a bad performance. No bigger example than Glen Campbell in True Grit (unless it's Sofia Copella in Godfather 3). The best quote I ever heard about Jeffrey Hunter was about him in King of Kings (which critics called "I was a Teenage Jesus")@@annabrewer8054

Thanks. I didn't know that. I was a big Gene Pitney fan.

It happened in the real world. see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy

A little 'film noir?...

"Nothing's too good for the man who shot Liberty Valance." Then we see the sad resignation of Hallie and Ransom. It is a perfect ending.

It's not meant to feel as epic. It's more of a personal drama.

Kid, you gotta learn the rules before you can break 'em!

It does indeed look like something from the 1930-40s but that was probably a deliberate choice on Ford's part to serve as a tribute too and thematic contrast against the older simpler stories. Unfortunately it may have been too soon for a homage to that era to make sense so it ended up looking dated instead. A bit like making a homage to The Avengers in the current year.

After auditioning in Hollywood for years I finally got cast. Then the strike hit. Hahaha.

O'Brien is playing the Thomas Mitchell role.

I just finished watching it for the first time and agree that the 2 main stars were too old for the parts, and the remaining runtime after Liberty got shot felt like it dragged. But it was still a great movie overall!

To think Van Cleef's screen debut was as the silent gunslinger in High Noon. (Stanley Kramer wanted him to play deputy Harvey Pell but required him to fix his nose - he refused (he said his nose was a distinctive feature) - and they still gave him a part.

Good but it's no Grapes of Wrath.😊

See The Fabelmans and you will find out!

I don't think this film would have worked near as well in color. The black and white makes everything seem more urgent and personal. The more ' cinematic" movies Spielberg mentions did benefit from color.

Why do you hate it?

@caesarpizza1338 because the Jimmy Stewart character destroyed the life of the man who saved his life multiple times. That is just to much like reality, and I watch movies to escape reality for a little while.

@@pughoneycutt1986 jimmy didn't destroy Wayne's life, Wayne sacrifice himself for him.

@caesarpizza1338 matter of perspective, even if you are right it's still to much like reality that I watch movies to get away from for a while

Not so keen then.

Therefore, the good senator's whole career was established on the foundation of violence that he traveled West to destroy.

Think you might want to look in the mirror bud lol, gross oversimplification. Speilberg acknowledges the limitations of law, as he says in this very clip, when dealing with unrighteous and evil people who game the system. He very much acknowledges that Wayne's survivalist instincts were what was necessary to put Valance down. That being said, you're not right at all at that being the main point of the film.

@@KingLoop13 okie dokie.

I think you’re missing the point of the movie. It isn’t about how John Wayne’s character, Tom, was needed to bring about justice, it’s the opposite. Tom is a relic of the past, he has no place in civilized society, he ALONGSIDE Liberty must fade into dust for justice to prevail. Over the whole movie Tom has very few redeeming traits, he’s a drunkard, obsessive, violent, depressive and impulsive. The only reason he makes the right choice is because without the woman he loves, he no longer feels any real connection to society and can therefore become a hermit, removing himself from the equation. He’s a sad lonely man that represents the worst of the west and his one truly redeeming act isn’t shooting liberty, it’s disappearing and staying silent.

@@MrHowtofall What a great analysis. I appreciate your thoughtful response. 👍

But that's the beauty of the characters. They are both reluctant heroes in their own way. Duke knows Liberty is a punk but as long as he's left alone he pretty much stays out of it. For him that is just the way things are done, the law of the gun. He's the cynic. Jimmy is the idealist. He believes in the law but eventually he comes to realize Duke is right, the only way it ends is with one of them dead. He earns Duke's respect by having the guts to go against Liberty knowing he hasn't got a chance. That's why Duke shoots Liberty. Then he immediately regrets it when he realizes saving Jimmy cost him his girl. He wants to shoot Jimmy but he knows he can't do that so he numbs his pain the only way he knows how, by getting drunk. But in the end he knows Jimmy is what the territory needs and that's why he shows up at the convention and tells Jimmy the truth, then forces Jimmy to do something with the life Duke gave him, a bit like Tom Hanks on the bridge in Saving Private Ryan. Jimmy's character actually had more guts and gumption than Duke's who would have been happy just being left alone and at the end of the day he sort of shames Duke into doing what he should have done years before. Excuse the length of my response, but I love this movie.

@@itinerantpatriot1196 Naw, I didn't think that your comments were that long. I can see your passion for this film. However, it didn't convince me. Maybe John Ford wanted us to take sides. Maybe that's the point of this movie. Anyway, I will always believe that The Searchers was the best John Wayne, John Ford movie western that was ever made. And, Jimmy Stewart wasn't in it. In many ways you are right when you said, that Jimmy had to face the issue and realize that action had to be taken and one of them had to die. With that in mind, fortunately John Wayne was there or Liberty would have finished it. Sometimes, you just can not talk your way out of a serious situation. Could be why there are too many problems in this country today. Too many politicians that talk too much.