Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
ACF #35: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Great Western series continues. Prof. Marini and I move from the sacred law of the family–The Searchers–to the law of the city: Liberty Valance. We talk about love and law, nature and progress, the desert and the railroad, and the rest of the symbols and structures that stand out in John Ford’s best movie. Listen to our conversation, friends, and please share the podcast. If you prefer iTunes, go here, and please leave us a review/rating. You can also find us on stitcher and on pocketcasts.
.
Published in Podcasts
I’m looking forward to listening. This is one of my favorite all-time movies.
I loved your discussion on “The Searchers.” Thanks for doing these.
This is one of my favorite movies too. It is hard not to like anything with both Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne.
This was a good discussion.
I’ll be listening shortly.
Lee Marvin’s performance is IMO central to making the film work.
& Edmund O’Brien’s Thomas Mitchell eloquent drunk impersonation is central to making the film fun!
Also one of the two times the Lees, Van Cleef and Marvin, worked together.
No spoiler here, but a third cast member was also there.
Yes, it’s a very unusual role for Lee van Cleef, but he does it well. A jackal well done.
Plus, Strother Martin doing the archetype for the psycho sidekick, forerunner of many to follow.
Strother was the third cast member I mentioned above in the other vehicle in which Marvin and Van Cleef were together–a Twilight Zone episode called The Grave, in which all three appeared.
Great pod.
I’ve always taken a more cynical view of the fact that Stoddard’s political rise was based on a myth. That makes me a child of the ’60s, perhaps, and it seems at odds with what Ford likely intended. It was nice to hear a persuasive, alternative viewpoint in the podcast.
It might be Ford’s intent was more general than that; a commentary history as we know it and the differences there might be between what we have been told and the truth.
Hey, your stitcher link in the OP goes to The Searchers, FYI.
Which I’m finally listening to…
Your discussion makes me think of The Virginian, which I just studied with my 14 year old. The Virginian has to hang his cattle-rustling best friend, his affianced cannot see the difference between that law-in-your-own-hands action and lynching in post-Civil War South until Judge Henry makes her see that the former is a man’s attempt to bring law to barbarism where law has no reach, and the latter is barbarism to undermine the law.
Re my comment above, I think I was wrong and the link is fine; I just have fat fingers.
I loved “The Virginian” — and “Shane” too.
I’ve read a lot of Louis Lamour books — when I was in high school but I always preferred Elmore Leonard’s westerns.
I like those writers too. Virginian is Owen Wister.
Why does Hallie choose Rance over Tom?
The professor called Doniphan a god; I would say more force of nature, or a stand-in for the desert itself. With the line at the end about the desert being the same, you know that Tom was also the same man he was before the railroad. It wouldn’t have changed him at all. Rance may be a noble man, but he he first and foremost a man, not a god.
If Hallie marries Tom, his plan is that he will build the world they will live in. He will do it for her, but he will do it, not them; he will present it to her as a gift. And the world he builds will be largely unaffected by the changes to the world around them. Rance, on the other hand, will be part of the changes in a way that Tom never could be, and they are changes to which she is looking forward.
But the most important point is that Rance will need her help in a way that Tom never will. Gods don’t need help. Men do.
Now, I think I’ll watch it.
Lee Marvin’s character was a bit like Curly Bill Brocius:
Although there is some dispute about Curly’s demise. It was from a shotgun blast that almost cut him in half in a confrontation with Wyatt Earp.
Click on the link from True West on the story of the terror of Cochise County.
Oh, one more thing. I’m pretty sure the Doc could read. At least I hope so.
Same here–but Hondo‘s still memorable!
Hmmm. That’s been a few years ago that I saw that and it’s not clicking in my memory. I better watch it pronto.
Loved Powers Boothe’s (fictional?) Curly Bill in Tombstone.
It’s certainly better than Rome, where Brutus had not only to send off a king to install a republic, but to execute his kids…
Yes, exactly! There is no going around the fact that women like comforts where men might like hardship. A man might want it his way where a woman might like it the easy way-
Yup. Lives on in the collective memory of, well, us & the memes…
Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t post this!
The paradox is that the comforts only come after taking risks, for example building a railroad. And the women are more risk averse.
The women are, if you pardon the pun, standing on two legs–gov’t & the markets. They converge to rationalizing risk. You can take risks that yield results, not others. Risks in the service of abolishing risk.
Who’d say no to that!
Also, women want long-term stability for themselves and their families, too. The United States seemed a pretty good bet for a lot of people. It’s important for women to harness men and their ambitions to lift them as high as possible and then to lock it in with tribal or national structures.
This is the symbiosis of the personal with the national writ at the family level.
Titus, your next assignment, should you decide to accept it …