Liberty Valance Meets El Diablo

How the West Was Never Won

An eastern lawyer, Ransom Stoddard, travels west to the land of opportunity.  When his stagecoach is held up, the leader of the gang beats him senseless.   Taken to the town of Shinbone, he recovers and sets up shop as an attorney and teacher, while washing dishes at the local inn.   The innkeeper’s daughter slowly, but surely, falls in love with the quiet stranger.  But his troubles with the outlaw, Liberty Valance, continue.  Valance, who preys on the weak, sees an easy target for his violence.  The only person standing between Valance and Stoddard is a local horse rancher.  Valance is not ready to take on Tom Doniphon, who may be a faster draw in a gunfight.  The lawyer leads a local initiative for delegates to the statehood convention, which is opposed by cattle ranchers ‘south of the picket wire.’  Valance, who is in the pay of the ranchers, campaigns against the initiative by assaulting and harassing the townspeople and farmers.  He loses the vote, which results in Stoddard and Peabody (the newspaper publisher) becoming the local delegates.  At this point Valance challenges Stoddard to a gunfight, which Stoddard will surely lose.  Despite entreaties by the townspeople, and the innkeeper’s daughter, Stoddard faces Valance down, using a borrowed handgun.  Incredibly, Valance falls to Stoddard’s shooting, or so it appears.  At the statehood convention, the cattle ranchers pillory him as a murderer.  On the verge of walking out, Stoddard is stopped by Tom Doniphon who reveals that it was Doniphon, not Stoddard, who killed Valance.  Doniphon could live with an act of violence that went against Stoddard’s very nature.  Stoddard returns to the convention, setting in motion a political career that is forever overshadowed by his reputation as ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.’

An eastern schoolteacher, Billy Ray Smith, is employed in a small western town in his chosen profession.  Naïve and soft spoken, he is blissfully unaware that one of his young female students, Nettie, is in love with him.  Committed to teaching, he nevertheless revels in cheap paper novellas detailing the heroics of Kid Durango.  During a reading of the latest Kid Durango story, reality intrudes as El Diablo, a Mexican bandit, and his gang invades the town, rob the bank, and kidnap Nettie, who is initially entranced with the arrival of the notorious outlaw.  Determined to rescue his student, Billy Ray invests in western clothes, gets a horse, and sets off in search of Kid Durango, the only person with the skills to stop El Diablo.  He meets up with an African-American gunslinger, Van Leek, who shoots men in the back just because that is the side facing him.  A series of misadventures dog their travels as Billy Ray tries to fit his romantic ideas to the reality around him.   It develops that Van Leek, is the model for the Kid Durango stories, penned by an eastern writer whose idea of gallantry is as romanticized as Billy Ray’s.  Van Leek gathers up a gang of ne’er do wells, and they set off for El Diablo’s hideout.  Despite their planning, all but Van Leek and Billy Ray are killed.  Billy Ray is captured, and he learns that Nettie has been turned into El Diablo’s lover.  In a final showdown, Billy Ray kills El Diablo by shooting him in the back, as he learned to do from his mentor.  Nettie is returned to her mother, and Billy Ray rides off into the sunset with Van Leek to write true stories of Van Leek’s exploits.

Eastern professionals come west and collide with reality.  But which reality, portrayed by these movies, is the truth?  Did “El Diablo” use “Liberty Valance” as the example of western stories it wished to parody?  The parallels are striking.  Eastern professionals, living in small western towns, menaced by evil outlaws, become heroes.  One is a reluctant hero, interested only in bringing the benefits of civilization to his adopted home.  He teaches reading, practices law, and finally becomes a politician.  Ransom Stoddard is the relentless march of modern civilization into a place that is not entirely welcoming.  Tom Doniphon is the pioneer who is not looking for modernity, but is enough of a realist to accept that it is coming.  Modern civilization lives by the law, not the gun, yet Stoddard turns to the one man, Doniphon, who can teach him what he needs to do in the ultimate confrontation with lawlessness, as represented by Valance.

Billy Ray is the romantic dreamer, who escapes into heroic fantasies of a West that does not exist, except in the imagination.  He teaches because that is what he does, a boring task relieved only by his forays into Kid Durango’s adventures.   Unlike Stoddard he is not inclined to take the initiative, until confronted with the abduction of a student and a prostrate populace.  Van Leek is the realist who simply wants to win, by any means necessary.  When crunch time comes, Billy Ray, like Stoddard, turns to the gun but for Billy Ray there is no crisis of conscience when he shoots El Diablo.   He not only becomes the hero he once read about, he lives the stories by traveling with Van Leek.  Stoddard will bring civilization, but Billy Ray will regale the civilized with tales of a world they can only imagine, as he once did.

Members of the fourth estate assist both Stoddard and Smith.   Peabody is the publisher of the Shinbone Star and a reluctant participant in a process that he is charged with observing and critiquing.  In his own way, Peabody is as much a symbol of approaching modernity as is Stoddard, and the two are natural allies.  In the case of the Kid Durango writer, he chooses to participate in an actual adventure, motivated by Billy Ray’s sense of chivalry and duty, and the excitement of being there.  Billy Ray’s romanticism has captured the writer.

The existing legal infrastructure is unable to cope with the depredations of either outlaw.  Both sheriffs would prefer that the problem of the outlaws go away, preferably leaving them alive.  Both sheriffs are amazed that the eastern bumpkin wins the encounter with the outlaw.

The outlaws themselves are a study in contrasts.  Valance is a smarmy, evil person.  He appears more than once in the movie, always ready to lash out, and each outrage further builds the audience’s sympathies for Stoddard.  When Valance is finally killed, one cannot help but feel a sense of satisfaction.  El Diablo, on the other hand, appears at the beginning and near the end of the movie.  It is evident that he is evil, why else would he shoot a man barely able to hold a gun simply because he is tired of waiting?   El Diablo’s interactions with Billy Ray and Van Leek are brief, and to the point.  He intends to kill both men and is certain of success.  The surprised look when Billy Ray shoots him in the back suggests he had not considered that ‘good’ men would behave dishonorably.

And this is where the truth is finally seen, for in both movies a ‘good’ man behaves badly.  Tom Doniphon shoots Liberty Valance from the shadows, unseen by the townsfolk.  Ransom Stoddard is initially consumed by guilt because he believes he fired the fatal shot.   Stoddard is moved by moral considerations that do not trouble Doniphon.  It is Stoddard’s morality that is inexorably creeping into the community.  Billy Ray Smith shoots El Diablo in the back because that is the side that is presented to him, and like his mentor he simply wants to win.  Billy Ray’s triumph comes not because good always triumphs, but because a good man is willing to become what the moment requires, something Stoddard could barely consider.  Each movie, in its own way, presents a portion of the truth, which is realized in the way the outlaws are killed.  This is how the West was really won, by any means necessary.

A Comment on Robert Beltran as El Diablo:

Robert Beltran’s fans readily appreciate the actor’s considerable acting skills.  In those movies where his skills are not as evident, they focus on his appearance.  “El Diablo” certainly falls into this category.  When the outlaw is first glimpsed, it is during a long, loving pan up his body, covered in a tight outfit worthy of the Cisco Kid.  Only for a moment do we see the senseless evil he is capable of, as he kills a man for taking too long to draw a gun.  When he reappears, he is arrogant and well dressed.   He is a good-looking bad boy, dangerous yet attractive.  The combination is nearly irresistible on the screen, even if the actual reality might prove otherwise.   The schoolgirl Nettie, initially entranced by the appearance of the outlaw, is terrified as he kidnaps her, then simply dazed as she stands by his side as the current sex object, schooled in his preferences.  We never see how El Diablo accomplishes this transformation, hinted at in a comment to Billy Ray that she is a “very good student.”   The innuendo is unmistakable.  It is this scene that captures his fans’ imaginations, as they fantasize opportunities to be that “very good student.”

But the role itself demands very little of Robert since it is a small part in a movie that is not about El Diablo.   El Diablo is the focal point for Billy Ray’s journey, and that is all.  Once again Robert’s character opens up the action, and we focus on the main characters and their behavior.  When we see El Diablo again, it is to bring the story to a close.  Robert never gets to do with El Diablo what Lee Marvin did with Liberty Valance; create a bully that clearly invites, and intensifies, your disdain.  Instead, we are treated to an arrogant character, fully convinced that he can do as he pleases, with no consequences.  His interaction with Nettie, and the way he does it in front of Billy Ray, emphasizes his complete domination of the moment and the woman.   In his own way, El Diablo is another caricature in a movie about Western caricatures.  Robert gives El Diablo as much as is needed to create and sustain that image.  Nothing more.