This article focuses on John Ford westerns, dealing more specifically with Stagecoach (1939), The searchers (1956) and The man who shot Liberty Valance (1962), films that form a trilogy engaged in the representation of distinct stages of the conquest of the West, allowing for a discussion on Ford's relationship with the mythology of the genre; from film to film, the hero's status changes in consonance with an increasing reflexivity that interrogates the premises of the national formation.
John Ford; western; status of the hero; American cinema