I thought I knew what “elegiac” meant, but nonetheless looked it up before settling on my title. Roughly speaking, it means a poem or song about the past; more loosely interpreted it could be a story, a novel, etc–or a movie. It usually , literally or by implication, bids farewell to someone or something and there is usually a feeling of melancholy and regret about it. “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”(TMWSLV or just LV) fits the bill quite nicely.

I had, of course, seen LV years ago–how many times I do not know for it played in a theatre where I worked most of the time from the end of my junior year of high school until I graduated from college. TCM recently presented it and I took advantage of their good choice. It is not just a good movie, it is a very good one, verging on greatness. In fact, it is my no 3 on my list of Westerns after No 1, “Warlock,” and No 2 “The Searchers”–“Searchers,” incidentally, like LV, was directed by John Ford.

By watching this movie you get two elegiacs and if you’re as affected by good ones as I am you get more opportunities to shed a heartfelt tear or two. First of all, set about a decade into the 20th century, the story itself is an elegiac to the 19th century west, the old Wild West we know from movies and the real one which was somewhat different from the Hollywood version, but perhaps not so much so as to make Hollywood a total liar.

The movie is set in an unspecified state somewhere in or near the Rockies and with a lot of grazing land. Wyoming and Colorado both jump to mind, but it’s not really that important. Travel is still mostly by buckboard and the small town still looks much like the old west. But from the conversations and attitudes of the characters it is clear a new era has began. The characters may not be entirely aware of this, but somewhere in the backs of their minds they know it. And it is brought out in their daily lives as they go about the business of accommodating a new century and its ways, perhaps sometimes without realizing it. And although they don’t make a big point of it, the old ways still linger in habits and attitudes and will for another generation or two. Of course a world war, a depression and another world war might speed up things a bit.

But the old ways are passing and as a symbol of this we have an elegant and aging couple, Sen Ransom Stoddard(James Stewart) and his wife, Hallie(lovely Vera Miles who broke my heart many times in my teens and early 20’s). They have come back to Shinbone not for political reasons, but on a private mission of love and regret. Their old friend Tom Doniphon has just died and they are there to honor him and perhaps revive a memory or two. But they are well dressed and a bit Eastern now in their manners and they clearly belong to a past that is fading. We will return to this narrative shortly.

So one elegiac is to the old West. The other is to the old west’s champion in the 20th century, Western Movies. The first more or less coherent American film we know of, “The Great Train Robbery”(1903?) is a Western and Westerns continued to be made from time to time But they picked up briskly in the 1930’s and over about the next generation they dominated, into the early 1960’s when they began to fade, though never quite fading away entirely, certainly not in the American collective subconscious. They continue there, perhaps being one of the causes of some of our political peculiarities of the past decade or so.

But LV reminds us of the way Westerns were once, when my generation was young and the makers of the Westerns were getting old. This was the classic era of the genre and it gave us “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” and “Duel in the Sun,” , “Ft Apache” and “Pursued” and “Red River.” A little later it had even better gifts–“High Noon” and “The Gunfighter,” and “Shane, ” and two I’ve already mentioned, my Nos 1 and 2, “Warlock” and “The Searchers.” There was no one plot–the plots varied to a fairly large extent. But the background or setting, geographical and, more importantly, psychological, was often the same.

There was The Hero, usually an out of towner or been-long away returnee or perhaps a community leader such as a rancher. But more often he was a loner and he usually started out defending the innocent or pursuing a bad guy or guys, frequently without a lot of support. Somewhere along the way The Girl would put in an appearance and their tangled romance would be the subplot or perhaps a part of the overall plot. (Jo An Fleet in “Gunfight at the OK Corral,” for example). Sometimes there was a competitor for her affections, often a tenderfoot who was no match for the Hero or a bad guy who was–well, no match for the Hero.

There was sporadic violence and threatening and eventually a violent climax, a group one(“The Big Country”) or more typically and one on one shootout in the street(“The Fastest Gun Alive”). All of these were subject to some changes and elaborations from time to time, but for twenty years or so the pattern pretty much held. I would not insult these really fairly noble films, nor their creators, by defining them as being of the “formula” variety, but it was impossible not to note the similarities. And the longer they went on the easier it was for the similarities to drift into cliches, though perhaps not so badly as you might expect. But perhaps the film makers thought they noticed a desire on the part of the public for something a little bit different And perhaps they were right.

The time was coming when the heroes would be less heroic and the situations more nuanced and less morally clear cut. The heroes would have feet–or at lest the occasional toe–of clay and the bad guys might have a certain elan to them. It was not the time of the “Spaghetti Western” yet when LV was released but it was only a few years off and by the end of the decade would be taking over the Western genre. And the Hero and the Girl and all the rest went with the old movies or at least were somewhat marginalized.

And I think this was anticipated, perhaps not extremely consciously, by both fans and film-makers, and that deep down they all realized an era was ending. The actors and the directors were sometimes still the same and the stories weren’t that different, but by the early 1960’s something was changing. In 1962 when LV was made the changes had not yet gone too far, but some people were noticing, both with TV and the movies. I remember a joke about adult Westerns being now the “good guys v the neurotic guys.” And there was some truth in this and while that truth was more in the planning stage than on the screen, enough of it was manifest to bring about a feeling of nostalgia on the part of fans–and apparently film makers too.

The movie business, like most businesses draws plans and it was perhaps noticeable to the Western movie professional that things were changing. new plans being made And it might have occurred to the great John Ford that his own time was passing and so was the time of the Western. And, while this is all speculation, maybe he decided to make one more of the old kind which would be a statement for himself and for the genre he loved. Hence, LV came to be.

The Good Guy was still there, only now there were two of them, Sen Stoddard and Tom Donophin (John Wayne). Vera Miles was the The Girl who in this case had two GG’s from which to choose. And there was certainly a bad guy, Liberty himself, worse than most and equal to about any in movie history.

The story unfolds with a few surprises but not enough to upset the genre–there is one really big one near the end, and no, I’m not going to reveal it. There’s too much of the serious mystery fan in me to do that. At the beginning, a stagecoach is approaching town and Liberty and his men strike. They are driven off, but one of the passengers, Ransom Stoddard, coming west to practice law, is badly beaten up. Tom shows up in time to help him and the others get to Shinbone, and there he meets meets Hallie who works in a local restaurant and who nurses him back to health.

Eventually Ransom becomes not only town lawyer, but also a teacher, coaching the residents(many of the immigrants, incidentally) on reading, writing and citizenship and urging them to support statehood for the Territory. While this goes on there are two main story lines. One is romantic, as both Ransom and Tom care for Hallie and she has feelings for both of them. The other is Liberty Valence who continues to terrify the town, but not quite going over the line to bringing down its total wrath on him. Meanwhile, the useless local Marshall(Andy Devine reprising himself)is-well, totally ineffective.

This eventually builds to a suspenseful confrontation and a rousing climax which I will leave for you to discover, along with the Big Twist. But I do have a couple of further comments on what happens along the way and how it happens. The whole movie is done with great skill and attention and with almost a tenderness toward the subject, which, if my fantasy is correct. Ford was aware of. And so he poured every talent and emotion into this film and gave us a number of memorable scenes, scenes that both thrill and deeply move you.

Early in the film, there is a scene where the Marshall takes Hallie out to Tom Doniphon’s old place, long since deserted and fallen into ruin. She is, understandably sad and reflective and the Marshall picks a flower she admires and presents it to her with a flourish or as close to that as he is able to get. Perhaps I’m reading too much into this scene, but it seems to me that we have a lot going on in this brief moment or two.

Hallie is remembering the past, the pain of more or less loving two men and now of knowing Tom is gone. The flower is a sign of comfort to her, her connection to the better part of the old days. The Marshall, who has never had a woman who dresses, acts or talks like Hallie is overwhelmed by her presence, and realizing his inability to do anything else for her, he offers her the flower, a poor gift, perhaps, but the only one he has.

In an early part of the flashback(which is the greater part of the movie) we get a scene of the stagecoach pulling into town with the injured Stoddard and other survivors of the robbery aboard. In a piece of odd timing which works perfectly Ford uses as background music the beautiful and moving “Genevieve, Oh Genevieve.” of which we hear a short instrumental version. Then it fades but a few notes pop in again among the regular sounds of the town. Then it is gone, like so many other things a part of the past. Whether this idea came from Ford’s conscious mind or from his instinct I don’t know, but one of them must have been at work–fortunately.

There is really almost nothing to criticize in this movie as a movie. I could, however(and I will)mention two things that today ring slightly hypocritical. While Rance Stoddard is teaching citizenship and government, he strongly plays up the fact that the people of Shinbone are for statehood, unlike the big ranchers who want to remain a Territory and keep out Federal interference which might make things better for the poorer farmers. At about the same time, one of his students, Tom’s employee, Pompey(Woody Strode) the only black character in the film, forgets the the “equal rights” statement in the preamble to the Constitution. “A lot of people forget that,” Ransom says. There is also the fact that Tom treats Pompey not perhaps as an equal , but at least close to it and better than many others do.

All of this is nice to see and a credit to John Ford. I cannot help reflecting, though, that even when the movie was made and certainly in their later years, both Stewart and Wayne were not shy about making their political opinions obvious. They were both strongly conservative but the conservatives of today would no doubt find their approach in this film to be unacceptable. For what it’s worth, I have to admire both Wayne and Stewart for their acting abilities and contributions to the art of the film, but I also think they were decent and honorable men. I would have disagreed with them on several matters of a political nature, but I would have respected them and their right to their opinions.

It is difficult to imagine how LV would have been accepted(or not)at Trump’s CPAC conference this past weekend. Certainly today’s Republican Party could use Wayne and Stewart or someone like them to bring them a sense of honor, decency, and honesty. Maybe there are some Republicans who will do that, but I don’t see many on the horizon.

In any event, whatever political comments may be appropriate now, the greater point here is the art of American movies, the contribution of Westerns to that art, and particularly the old type of Western which would fall out of favor in the 1960’s. It would be true to say that Westerns swept aside or under the rug many things wrong in our society, but what art form did not? And anyway, the greater point here is that this is a great Western, a great piece of film for those who like to learn about, or remember, the way things were. It is a valedictory to , our own past and the country’s past, and most of all the movies’ past, and valedictories have a way of remaining in mind after the cliches are gone.