The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

  • 97% of critics liked it
    (35 reviews)

  • 89% of users liked it
    (21,618 ratings)

Like Pontius Pilate, director John Ford asks "What is truth?" in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--but unlike Pilate, Ford waits for an answer. The film opens in 1910, with distinguished and influential U.S. senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) returning to the… More

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Unrated, 1 hr. 59 min.
Directed By
John Ford
Written By
James Warner Bellah, Willis Goldbeck
Genres
Western, Classics
In Theaters
May 28, 1962 Limited
On DVD
Jun 5, 2001
Paramount Home Video

Critic Reviews

  • Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

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

  • Ryan Cracknell, Movie Views

    The best film about bullying ever made.

  • Kevin Carr, 7M Pictures

    The movie does not offer a clean-cut look at morality and heroes, who emerge from a reluctant position, but it does draw a definitive line between good and evil.

  • Len Sousa, Slant Magazine

    An excellent and thoroughly unFord-like Ford western.

  • Sean Axmaker, Seanax.com

    [John] Ford has never made a darker portrait of the lies and the lives that built the west...

Read all 13 critic reviews

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Featured Audience Ratings

  • Graham J


    Ford's last masterpiece. A truly epic story of the end of the old west, Stewart and Wayne put in masterful performances.

  • Reid V


    I initially wasn't too enthused about the idea of sitting down with this film. While I certainly admire John Ford, I had grown accustomed to the more coarse view of human nature on display in the spaghetti westerns of Leone, Corbucci, and Petroni. However, I was in for quite a… More

  • Bob O


    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance asks the question: can the moralist Jimmy Stewart civilize the west, or will it uncivilize him? Stewart, John Wayne, and Lee Marvin come together under the guidance of master John Ford in a film that appears to adhere to respective Hollywood… More

  • xGary X


    An ageing senator returns to a frontier town for the funeral of an old friend and reminisces over his life as a young man. Considered one of John Ford's best and a classic of the genre, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is the closest Ford came to making a Frank Capra movie. It… More

  • Conner R


    Easily one of the greatest movies ever made and a true Hollywood classic. John Wayne and John Ford always make flawless movies together, this is no exception. However, this falls into the extra special category in the same reign as The Searchers or Stagecoach; it signifies everything… More

Read all 20 featured audience ratings

Cast

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