The Coronado Island Film Festival presents The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as part of its 2024 Student Classic Film Series, Western Month Spotlight feature on Sunday, Mar. 10, 2024 in the Winn Room of the Coronado Public Library (640 Orange Ave). The event begins at 1 pm and runs through 3:45 pm.
The screening is free and open to the public; but as part of the Student Classic Film Series, adults over 18 must be accompanied by a young person 18 years old or younger.
About “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”
If asked to name the master craftsman of the Western movie genre, the likely consensus choice among critics would be director John Ford. Best known to for introducing John Wayne to audiences in his 1939 breakout role in Stagecoach, Ford became renowned for his technicolor Western epics set against the sweeping vistas of Monument Valley, culminating with The Searchers in 1956, a film thought by many to be the finest Western in cinematic history. Perhaps appropriately, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford’s final western classic, stands in sharp contrast to these earlier films. Masterfully shot in black and white, largely on backlots and soundstages, Ford explores the “end of the Western myth,” upon which his earlier Westerns rely.
As a first generation American, student of history, decorated veteran and an unapologetic patriot, Ford here provides audiences with a cinematic American civics lesson, showing the elements necessary to move a small town from a chaotic frontier outpost and rule by violence and the gun, to become a civic community subject to the rule of law. Noteworthy as the first movie pairing two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, John Wayne and James Stewart, the story is a compelling and intimate tale of people caught up in a struggle against those willing to viciously impose their will upon others fraught with their own human fears and character flaws.
Ford asks profound questions about courage, wisdom and the qualities of character, public virtue and personal sacrifice required to build and maintain civil societies. Lee Marvin delivers a chillingly malevolent performance in the title role, the sadistic outlaw whose death in a climactic David versus Goliath gunfight births a legend that, years later, prompts one the most quoted lines in Western movie history and a pithy description of this quintessentially American film genre, “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Be sure not to miss the chance to screen this landmark John Ford classic!
Entering its third season, the CIFF Student Classic Film Series is a cinematic cultural literacy program (how to watch, listen and understand films) introducing middle school and high school students to the cinematic art as it first developed and was practiced by masters of the craft during the Golden Age of Hollywood. While cinephiles may differ, the Golden Age is generally recognized as studio produced films made from the mid-1930s to the early-1960s. The era featured a unique mix of economic, cultural, and social conditions that perfectly aligned for producing great movies by the score.
The Student Classic Film Series is designed to expose high school and middle school students and homeschoolers to the greatest motion pictures from The Golden Age of Hollywood. The Series offers a unique chance for young people to explore the history of the Hollywood Studio Era and the cultural legacy it bequeathed to audiences and aspiring filmmakers of today. All screenings are held in The Winn Room at the Coronado Public Library. All are free and open to the public. *Adults over 18 must be accompanied by a young person 18 years or or younger. The program began in 2022 with seed-grant funding provided by the City of Coronado Community Grant.
