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From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE? (spoiler, even for people who've seen it.)
Message-ID: <982@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Jul-85 23:51:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtgzz.982
Posted: Sun Jul 28 23:51:26 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 03:21:07 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 21

One of those strange reinterpretations of a film, but this one is valid
it you look at the scene in question carefully:

I watched MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE when it was shown on TBS just
recently (actually I saw it later in the day via videotape).  Something
struck me that I never noticed before.  Everyone knows that the public
thinks that it was Rance Stoddard (James Stewart) who killed Valance,
but that it was really Tom Donovan (John Wayne).  For the first time, I
noticed that Donovan is lying.  It was Stoddard who killed Valance.
How do I know?  A bullet, particularly a rifle bullet, has a fair
amount of momentum.  Valance has no side to side movement at all.  If
the bullet that hit him had any impact, it was straight back.  Wayne's
story was patently impossible.  The film still works this way, but
Donovan's self-pity when he loses the girl comes off looking very
differently.  In the end, he is lying nobly to save Stoddard's career,
and he succeeds, but the is not the man of the title, Stoddard really
is the man who shot Liberty Valance, but nobody who has seen the film
ever has mentioned it.

				Mark Leeper
				...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper