First of all, the filmmaking and characterization is of the age when it was created (or rather, when Ford started making movies).
I wouldn’t put either of those two among his best. Some people love The Searchers, but it’s not for all tastes (I find it overrated), and Liberty Valance is good, but not in his top five.
Also, you’re concentrating on nonessentials. The fact that Valance is from outside the town (and that doesn’t necessarily mean he can’t vote or run for office – often small towns include outlying areas as part of their electorate) is unimportant. Valance expects people to do what he says. He is a bully, and no one is willing to stand up to him. Like any bully, he gets angry when anyone does. Any dictator would behave the same way.
Ford is primarily about story. In Ford’s best films – and I’d include Stagecoach, Ft. Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Whole Town’s Talking, and The Quiet Man among them – the strength is story, and the characters seem a bit one-dimensional because that’s what they have to be.
But there are unexpected depths in many of Ford’s characters. Some have secrets that get shown in some very subtle ways. Ford wants his actors to be reactors (one reason why he liked using John Wayne), and they show their depth in subtle looks and emotions that may come across best on a big screen.
For instance, in Fort Apache, Henry Fonda plays a glory-seeking martinet. We see him die in a stupid and pointless battle with the indians. John Wayne, as his second-in-command saw this and only survives the battle because his does everything he can to try to dissuade Fonda from going ahead with the attack. As a result, Fonda sends him to the rear to be rid of him. After the battle – glorified much like the Battle of Little Big Horn – reporters ask Wayne about the battle and mention a sanitized painting showing Fonda dying in a blaze of glory. Wayne pauses – and that pause speaks volumes: he is thinking about what to say. When he speaks, he confirms the glorious death of Fonda, even knowing it’s a lie. Though the words aren’t said, Ford here already anticipated the famous line from Liberty Valance (“print the legend.”)
The characters also show interesting depths. Wayne is an advocate for the Indians and is consistently taking their side (one reason why he objects to Fonda’s attack: Wayne had given his word to the Indians that there would be no battle). This is not the attitude you’d think someone on the frontier was expected to have. Fonda thinks the Indians are savages and consistently shows bigotry toward them. Yet when the Indian agent is caught cheating them out of supplies, he punishes the agent.
On in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, there’s a scene where Wayne is told to bring a woman on patrol. He goes to his commander and protests. The commander insists. Wayne says he will make a formal protest. The commander already has the forms out and waiting. This exchange speaks volumes about the relationship between the two men.
Ford was one of the subtlist and straightforward of all directors. It’s easy to miss the characterizations because they are often told so quietly that they can be missed.
