ABSTRACT
The contemporary viewer may well have a few things to get past on first meeting John Ford. Ford made a lot of Westerns, and they are a good way into his work, not least because they embody the paradox raised in the preceding discussion – that of a populist surface belying artistic depth. One of Ford's abiding interests is the history of post-colonial America, a relatively young country whose past does not extend that far back from its present. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of Ford's last films, and a wonderfully mature work. Ford's degree of self-consciousness is also evident in the filmic legerdemain used to pull off the film title's conceit. Ford's contention appears to be that individual idealism is the only possible lifeboat when the ship is going down; and in this instance that idealism is enshrined in the Hippocratic Oath.
