To me it looked like both Tom and Ranse shot Liberty at almost the same time. So they both were responsible for killing him in my opinion.
Is there reason to believe that if Tom hadn't been there that Liberty would have won the gun battle? They were so close to each other that it looked like Ranse had a great chance. Ranse seems to believe that Tom saved his life by his actions but how can this be established for sure?
Actually, there's EVERY reason to believe that if Tom had not been there, Liberty would have killed Ranse.
Remember the scene where Tom has Ranse out to his ranch, and he's trying to teach him how to shoot? Ranse couldn't shoot to save his life!!
When Liberty shoots RS, it's in the elbow of his right arm. RS shot with his right hand, so at that point he had to put the pistol in his left hand, thus his chances of even HITTING LV dropped by a large margin.
So, having a good hand to shoot with, RS stood little chance of killing LV. Then, having to use his other hand while trying to deal with the pain of his wound, PLUS the terror of the situation, he stood absolutely NO chance.
Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway. John Wayne
Regardless of how good or bad of a shot anyone is, when a gun is fired, a bullet comes out and goes somewhere. I don't see any evidence that either Tom's or Ranse's bullets hit anything other than Liberty Valance.
shareif both had hit, there would be two wounds on Liberty Valance.
If Ranse would have missed, his bullet could have lodged into some piece of wood of even in the sand. Noone would notice. We didn't hear any glass shattering.
But it's a pure Ford moment to keep it in the shadows who hit and who missed. It's more important that Ranse was actually out there facing Liberty Valance, at least in my eyes it is.
The audience never gets to see Valence's wounds though, so we can't be certain. The town doctor turns the corpse over and just says "dead". That aside, Rance fired point blank at Valence. He didn't need to be a sharpshooter to hit a target ten feet in front of him.
The director tells us -- in the most emphatic way he can: It's called "The MAN Who Shot Liberty Valance" not "The MEN Who Shot Liberty Valance".
shareIt seems to me that nobody who's posted in this thread saw the scene which conclusively proves that Stoddard's shot goes wide of the mark.
When Liberty is lying dead in the street, the townspeople who hid during the shooutout emerge and start to gather around him. One of them !ooks up and sees a sign like a lawyer's shingle, swinging back and forth, suspended by one nail. The sign wasn't like that before the shootout because it was held in place by two nails. Now one nail is gone--gone because the sign is where Stoddard's bullet went.
The bystander notices the shingle but, though puzzled, he says nothing. Like everyone else, he assumes that Stoddard's bullet is lodged in Valance's body, and with the villain dead, the shingle mystery isn't important enough to dwell on.
I assume your post was tongue-in-cheek (???), since, of course, there was no such scene. The only shingle shown was Rance Stoddard's. Liberty Valance shot that upon exiting the Shinbone Star office, just after beating Dutton Peabody and wrecking the office. Later, as Stoddard passed the Star office, en route to the shootout, he pulled down part of the damaged shingle, looked at his name on it, and dropped it to the ground. At the point when Stoddard engaged Valance in the shootout, the damaged shingle (the only shingle in the scene) was well behind Stoddard - not beside nor behind Valance. Thus, no townspeople would have (or could have) looked at the shingle following the shooting, nor did anyone look at anything else (except at Valance's body).
And both Stoddard and Doniphon could, indeed, have shot Valance, for all we know. No one (in the scene, anyway) bothered to look for any bullet holes in Valance's body, let alone count them up. From there, he'd have simply been placed ignominiously in a pine coffin and buried.
you're not serious are you?
shareIn the first scene (that is, the first time we see the scene), it's clear that Rance shoots well wide. I'd say that Rance's bullet just flew off in the air.
Of course, in a sense they *did* both shoot Liberty Valance; it's just that Tom's bullet hit nearer the mark.
The point is moot. Beacuse it's the MAN who shot Liberty Valance, not the MEN.
shareI saw this movie again today, and I'm wondering if it was Ranse who shot him after all. Liberty did not fall back correctly for being shot from the side by a rifle. He fell as if he were shot from the front, not from the side.
I wonder if Tom's story of being there is even true. He may have told that story simply to remove the guilt from Rance's shoulders so he would continue to run for office.
I don't think so. Directors like Ford don't lie to their audiences, or permit their characters to do it for them. Besides, if you're right, the picture's theme changes entirely with only a select few (such as yourself) left to grasp its meaning. Too "stingy" (fundamentally dishonest?) an approach for a really great director.
sharea wound from a revolver is totally different from a shotgun.
shareBut it could be similar to a wound caused by a rifle, which is what Doniphon fires.
Oh, my God! They're turkeys!
This argument is starting to resemble the Kennedy assassination. Did John kill Lee (and come to think of it - did Lee really kill John?)
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It wasn't a shotgun.
It was a rifle. (A Winchester, I think.)
A single round, not a handful of pellets.
"The Opener of the Way is Waiting"
Rifle was likely .44-40 it was the 1892 Winchester (an anachronism)
The pistol is easier to Identify it was 1862 Colt navy Conversion which was .36 Caliber
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Shot_Liberty_Valance
without digging a bullet out of Valence you would exactly be able to tell..... The shot that Stoddard made was easy to hit at that range. It is plausible that both men shot Valance.
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"a wound from a revolver is totally different from a shotgun."
Doesn't matter; the wound was never examined. The doc took a swig of whiskey, kicked Valance over, and proclaimed him dead. That was it.
It seems the townfolk would have known who shot Liberty. If Rance did it, the body would display a bullet hole. But a shotgun would leave a quite different wound. Clearly, having Liberty dead was more important than who did it, and Rance was the only candidate from the townfolk point of view. Only Tom and Pompey (and the audience) knew what really happened. [SOMEBODY must have already addressed this issue; I'm not going through every post.]
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You aren't paying attention to the other posts. Tom Doniphon does not fire a shotgun. He fires a Winchester Model 1892. It is the favorite rifle/carbine of prop men on western movies because it was in continuous production from 1892 to the 1950's. It is intended to be a stand-in for and to be seen as a Winchester Model 1873.
The most popular cartridge for the Winchester Model 1873 was Winchester .44 - 40, that is, a bullet 440/1000ths of an inch in diameter propelled by 40 grains of black powder. This was also the most popular cartridge for the Colt Single Action Army pistol of 1873. By chambering both weapons a wrangler would need to carry only one type of cartridge for both his pistol and his long arm.
Ranse Stoddard is carrying what another poster wrote was a Colt Navy in caliber .36. I don't know what the powder load was, but probably 30 grains of black powder. The casual viewer is not expected to notice the details of the firearms.
This is what I thought too, and this is what I choose to believe.
The original short story had Wayne's character doing the deed, but this film is far from being a spiritual successor of the much more moody and pessimistic short story. I choose to see it as Ranse standing up to the bully, manly-style, and Tom later says what he says...maybe to ease his conscience, maybe out of bitterness...who cares, but he's one of those unreliable narratives.
There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly west
Of course it’s murder, but Valance is so despicable that we want to overlook it.
“Your thinking is untidy, like most so-called thinking today.” (Murder, My Sweet)
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This is one of those really stupid threads that makes IMDB IMDB. And how can anyone not know the difference between a shotgun and a rifle?
shareThis thread IS pointless.The entire point of the movie is about the irony of a man of high moral quality,who is intelligent and courageous and yet all his successful career is based on his killing a man, something he despises and he didnt even do.Thats why he goes to the funeral and thats why he feels a deep gratitude to the man who not only saved his life,but actually even created his career. If he had indeed killed Liberty Valance there would be no point to this story.
sharejimakros
I have to disagree that if Stoddard's shot hit Liberty there would be no point to the story. The facts, if one looks closely without the "Liberty was a monster who needed killing" spin which Stoddard puts on them, leave a more troubling picture. Liberty had all sorts of chances to kill Stoddard but didn't. Stoddard and his political ally Doniphon each take their shot at killing Liberty. Stoddard fired a point blank shot. I have no way of knowing it missed. Tom ambushed him at the same time from the shadows.
Just take a cold look at the facts presented, without the Liberty is a monster spin put on them by a man who had a hand in killing him.
I think Ford's vision is very complex. Stoddard and Doniphon represented progress. What they did cleared the way for a better future. One got "legend" credit and one didn't. But the act which birthed the legend, whether Stoddard or Doniphon or both get credit, might be far more sordid than Stoddard's self-serving memory implies.
At least that is what I think Ford is hinting at.
I just watched the scene. Earlier today Dec. 24, 2013, I read your interesting post and made sure I wathced it very closely.
I am responding to a 4 year old post....but I hope you see it someday????
There was a couple more important things to observe.
First Ranse Liberty shot Ranse in his right arm, looked like he took one in the bicept, while Liberty was confronting him with his drunken antics.
So that left Ranse, who was not a very studied shootist anyway, to shoot with his left hand. In my humble opinion, Ford, the director wanted to leave little doubt that Ranse missed.
Second, if you look at the angle of the gun when Ranse shoots, I would say he missed.
Thanks for your post anyway, You made me want to see the movie again just from your post.
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They didn't bother to check / do an autopsy. Everyone already knew Liberty had called Ranse out to the duel and they all ran for cover; next thing you know, Valance is dead and no one really cares, they just haul him off to be buried and are glad to be rid of the S.O.B.
We can nitpick ANY movie, ANY production to death but all we're really doing is robbing ourselves of any entertainment value and lessons to be learned in the underlying themes when we get too caught up in hair-splitting and even genuine but minor errors.
Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!
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Well, Ed, you've already got the nonchalant doctor who called for whiskey while tending to Liberty's body, helped himself to a snort and declared him dead; and on the law enforcement end, you have the cowardly buffoon of a town marshal (Link) who's only too glad to be rid of the thug; and finally, there's a lot more folks than not who are practically doing cartwheels over Valance's demise. You really think any of THEM are gonna jump up and down to demand a thorough investigation, autopsy, inquest, etc.? In a territory that had not yet been adopted into statehood and still had a long way to go before making and enforcing rigid laws?
Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!
The ironic thing about Liberty's death is that the only people to question it at the time it occurs are his two henchmen. Of course, they don't know about Doniphon, they're doing it because they are boot-licking Liberty, even in death. And what if the doctor actually HAD performed an autopsy? He would have found the rifle shell in Liberty. Do you really think he would've told the townspeople what he found? I'm sure Peabody would've counseled him not to muddy the waters.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
An issue to ponder regarding Liberty Valance: Ranse is actually standing up to Valance, is told to get out of the shadows, which he does, and shoot. Then Valance wounds Ranse but Ranse picks up the gun anyway and takes a shot at Valance, who, in the first depiction of the gunfight, falls down as if Ranse Stoddard has killed him. Doniphon's later depiction of the story has him killing Liberty Valance, but we have to take him at his word. Given how good a shot he is, how inexperienced Ranse is with firearms, his story makes sense, and we do see it in the flashback, though all we see is from somewhat of a distance.
I think that there's some ambiguity in all this. We have to take Doniphon on his word. He probably did shoot and kill Liberty Valance, but to be fair to Ranse, he's the one Valance was after, he's the one who came out of the shadows, looked death in the face, showed enormous courage in facing a man who's a crack shot with a pistol (and who's also a drunken sadist in the bargain). Doniphon remained in the shadows, essentially hiding. Valance couldn't see him, didn't know he was there, while he was looking Ranse right in the face. Who's the braver man, Stoddard or Donovan? I'd say, as far as what we're shown in the movie, they close to being equals. Ranse risked his life for what he believed in, Doniphon shot a drunk from a safe distance, an easy task for him to do. To my way of thinking Ranse Stoddard was one tough cookie, a brave man and an idealist. There was no reason for him to feel guilt over not being the man who shot Libery Valance.
Doniphon's turning up in the saloon right after the gunfight, his getting drunk real fast, nearly burning to death in a fire that he had set, doesn't show him in a particularly good light. Also, Doniphon always seemed to have his man Pompey at or near his side, always with a rifle, whenever there was trouble. Ranse was more alone, more in danger much of the time. Ranse may or may not have been the man who literally shot Liberty Valance, but if he hadn't turned up in Shinbone, lawbook in hand, things would have turned out differently. I think it is fair to say Ransom Stoddard was the man who got Liberty Valance shot. This movie is far more subtle than one might think.
Tom would have ended up killing Liberty eventually, I'm sure. The irony is he had to do it the way he did, saving Ranse, which turned him into a hero and got him Tom's girl.
What we got here is... failure to communicate! share
Tom shot Liberty, saving Ranse's life. Ranse couldn't hit anything with his good arm, much less his bad arm. This can be established for sure because Ranse was there and believes it.
What we got here is... failure to communicate! share