The John Ford movie Steven Spielberg called “a cult classic”
Even the most influential directors of all time have their own personal heroes, and for Steven Spielberg, there’s a handful of filmmakers who will forever lie close to his heart. The likes of Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, Stanley Kubrick and Michael Curtiz have all played their hand in inspiring Spielberg, as proven through his filmography.
But of all the directors that Spielberg admires, it’s hard to look beyond his deep love for the master of the old western John Ford. Spielberg has previously admitted to watching a Ford movie before beginning a new project, and he also once pointed out the film from Ford’s catalogue that serves as something of a departure from his other works.
“There’s something always modern about The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I also think it is one of the few John Ford films that has become a cult classic,” Spielberg once said when introducing the film on TCM. “All his films have stood the test of time, but I don’t hold Liberty Valance up to John Ford’s cinema. Those films had a kind of location and cinematic novelty that no one had ever composed before.”
The director continued, “This is John Ford telling a story based on performance and based on his strong screenplay. Just based on a kind of simplicity in visual style. It’s his least adored film visually, but it’s a powerful story, one of the most powerful stories about a bully. Essentially, Liberty Vallance, played by Lee Marvin, is someone who has terrorised a small town.”
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was released in 1962 and saw John Wayne and James Stewart star alongside the likes of Vera Miles, Edmond O’Brien, Andy Devine and John Carradine. Diving into the complex nature of justice, as Spielberg notes, the film saw Ford depart from his usual spectacle style into something more narratively driven.
“I don’t think ‘western’ when I think of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” Spielberg continued. “Everybody is wardrobed, and I believe the only nomination the film got was for wardrobe, but the film just feels less like a western and more like a social statement, more about justice; it’s really about the balance between law and taking responsibility for the justice that needs to be meted out.”
Signing off with his high praise of Ford, the director said, “John Ford is certainly one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and one of the most significant influencers of stories about the old west. He was a leader of that particular part, but it was a time when the western dominated the culture in terms of an audience’s interest to see a certain genre. Everybody wanted to see westerns.”
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