User Reviews

. . . the only Question being, Is it a dirge for John Ford, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Tom Doniphon, Liberty Valance, movie Westerns, the American West, or All of the Above? From the audio interview snippets of Westerns director John Ford castigating LAST PICTURE SHOW filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich's mostly obtuse queries, it's clear that the late Mr. Ford agreed with the Majority of Americans: Film "school" pundits, critics, historians, and scribes generally cannot puzzle out the Meaning of a Picture, even if it jumps off the Big Screen and bites them on their nose! Anybody can order Cybill Shepherd to strip off her clothes and jump into a pool, but a perceptive mind is required to see that Ford did NOT present John Wayne's character as the "hero" of his LIBERTY VALANCE project (despite what the Paramount Studios ad hacks tried to make out, and despite what the sort of folks who went to the theaters to see John Wayne wanted and expected). As Ford wised up, he began to see the West for what it actually was and still is: a stone house built upon a foundation of shifting sand lies! Wayne's character drinks himself to death when he realizes this Truth. Since James Stewart's character lives most of his life Up North, he just gets really sad when The Truth dawns upon him.