"This is theWest, sir. When the legend becomes a fact, print the legend." John Fordwove all his Western masterpieces from the poetry of this conundrum, butnone so much as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which tells of thesubmission of the Old West to the rule of law and order. James Stewartas Ransom Stoddard grows from a greenhorn Eastern lawyer to grey-hairedstate senator, a rising star along with the Western pioneers' fight forstatehood for their territory. But if the West is to become a garden itis over the graves of men like John Wayne's Tom Doniphon, sharp-shootingrancher and gentleman anarchist. This is a film about the advent ofpolitics, and thus of hypocrisy, in the West, as Stoddard gets hisHallie (Vera Miles) and his comet-like rise to power, and Tom gets onlya wild cactus rose. It's a film about the inevitability of compromisejust as surely as the truth-telling newspaperman Edmond O'Brien faceshis own leering shadow as a prelude to a brutal beating. Andrew Sarriswrites in The John Ford Mystery: "The vital thrust of Ford's actorswithin the bursting frames of his shot sequences demonstrates that lifeneed not be devoid of form, and that form need not be gained at theexpense of vitality. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance must beranked...as one of the enduring masterpieces of that cinema which haschosen to focus on the mystical processes of time."