In John Ford's stark, melancholy swan song for the conventional frontier Western, aged Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) returns to the small town of Shinbone with his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles), for the funeral of his friend, Tom Doniphan (John Wayne), where he recounts for reporters his relationship with the man. His arrival in the town years earlier as a newly minted lawyer had been welcomed with a vicious beating by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), a flamboyant thug hired by powerful business interests fearful of the lawyer's intentions to stump for statehood. Doniphan, a rancher and feared gunman, finds Stoddard unconscious, takes him into town, and continues to protect him, particularly after coming to realize that the woman he loves cares more for the lawyer. Despite Doniphan's warnings that the only law in the region comes at the end of a gun barrel, the stubborn lawyer insists on teaching the illiterate townspeople about the rule of law in a democratic society. When Stoddard is elected as the regional delegate to the territorial convention, Valance baits the politician, a notoriously inept gunman, into a showdown.

The film, which plays like a Western version of Freud's CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, reflects the aging director's ambivalence about many of the beliefs that had animated his earlier work. Shot on two soundstages because of a limited budget and Ford's poor health, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE blends a stripped-down look with an intentionally fractured, ambiguous narrative to stand as a haunting elegy for the fearless gunman, the endless wilderness, and the loss of freedom their vanishing betokens.

DVD Features:

Region 1
Keep Case - Sensormatic
Single Side - Dual Layer
Anamorphic Widescreen - 1.66
Letterbox - 1.66
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 Mono - English
Dolby Digital Mono - French
Additional Release Material:
Trailers: Original Theatrical Trailer
Interactive Features:
Interactive Menus
Scene Selection

John Wayne: Oscar winning actor, TRUE GRIT, SANDS OF IWO JIMA
James Stewart: Oscar-winning actor, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, VERTIGO, HARVEY
Lee Marvin: American Actor
Vera Miles: American Actress
Dutton Peabody: 
Andy Devine: American Character Actor
Ken Murray: American Actor/Vaudevillian
John Carradine: American actor, BLUEBEARD (1944)
Jeanette Nolan: American Supporting Actress
Strother Martin: American Supporting Actor

John Ford: American Director, THE SEARCHERS (1956)

Willis Goldbeck: Director/Screenwriter/Prod.

James Warner Bellah: Screenwriter
Willis Goldbeck: Director/Screenwriter/Prod.

Cyril Mockridge: 
Alfred Newman: Composer/Conductor/D.1970

Otho S. Lovering: Editor, mostly Westerns, 1920s-1960s

"...John Ford's valedictory to the Old West...with Wayne wringing a surprising amount of pathos out of his role..."
"[O]ddly stirring and ahead of its time."
"...Director John Ford's last masterpiece, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, features a killer cast..."
"[O]ne of Ford's most moving films. It boasts three superb performances."
"[The film offers] a bittersweet look at the closing of the frontier by focusing on two strikingly different men who help one town choose law and order over the chaos of the open range."