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Poster for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Together for the first time

1962 · 2h 3m · Approved Western
Directed by John Ford

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Overview

Questions arise when Senator Stoddard attends the funeral of a local man named Tom Doniphon in a small Western town. Flashing back, we learn Doniphon saved Stoddard, then a lawyer, when he was roughed up by a crew of outlaws terrorizing the town, led by Liberty Valance. As the territory's safety hung in the balance, Doniphon and Stoddard, two of the only people standing up to him, proved to be very important, but different, foes to Valance.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
95%
Tomatometer
Fresh

There's much to say about it; the simplest is that it's both the most romantic of Westerns and the greatest American political movie.

Richard Brody, New Yorker
Fresh

There is a purity to the John Ford style. His composition is classical. He arranges his characters within the frame to reflect power dynamics -- or sometimes to suggest a balance is changing.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Rotten

John Ford and the writers have somewhat overplayed their hands. They have taken a disarmingly simple and affecting premise, developed it with craft and skill to a natural point of conclusion, and then have proceeded to run it into the ground.

Variety Staff, Variety
Fresh

A great film, rich in thought and feeling, composed in rhythms that vary from the elegiac to the spontaneous.

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
Fresh

Ford's purest and most sustained expression of the familiar themes of the passing of the Old West, the conflict between the untamed wilderness and the cultivated garden, and the power of myth.

Nigel Floyd, Time Out

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