The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Inhabits Film Noir

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, John Ford, the grand master of the genre, has infused his Western with the conventions of the previous decade’s noir style, almost reconceiving it. Shot in constricted, uncomfortably dark and angular interior settings, this decidedly black and white film used the familiar hallmarks of film noir to subvert the openness and even the optimism characteristically associated with Westerns. Shinbone may be at the river’s edge and now on the train line, but its ethos is as dark and anxious as that of noir films. Civilization, which was usually a dubious prospect in Westerns, is here undermined both by the compromises it requires and the prospects it offers. The energetic past is past and the present is without appeal. The paranoia and claustrophobia of film noir has infected the robustness of the larger host genre, more comprehensively and effectively than in any other major Western.