This article deals with two perplexing questions that arise from the viewing of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962): the use of flashback and the presence of nostalgia, an emotion foreign to epic poetry. 7he first points to the existence of a mythical past estranged from the present,from which civilization arises and which is symbolized by the train which makes its appearance at the beginning and the end of the film. Nostalgia introduces a painful note in the present-day characters which may be defined both as old-age in a physical sense and the fact that they belong to another, legendary world. We show how these two elements converge in the splendid metaphor of the cactus flower
