The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 1962

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader: A great film, rich in thought and feeling, composed in rhythms that vary from the elegiac to the spontaneous. Read more

A.H. Weiler, New York Times: A basically honest, rugged and mature saga has been sapped of a great deal of effect by an obvious, overlong and garrulous anticlimax. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: There's much to say about it; the simplest is that it's both the most romantic of Westerns and the greatest American political movie. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Along with The Searchers, it represents John Ford at his most accomplished. And it is one of the best Westerns Hollywood has ever produced. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: There is a purity to the John Ford style. His composition is classical. He arranges his characters within the frame to reflect power dynamics -- or sometimes to suggest a balance is changing. Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out: Ford's purest and most sustained expression of the familiar themes of the passing of the Old West, the conflict between the untamed wilderness and the cultivated garden, and the power of myth. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: John Ford and the writers have somewhat overplayed their hands. They have taken a disarmingly simple and affecting premise, developed it with craft and skill to a natural point of conclusion, and then have proceeded to run it into the ground. Read more