Stagecoach by John Ford ★★★★★
This iconic 1939 black and white western by the legendary American director John Ford is one of the most influential films of all time. Orson Welles -a legendary filmmaker in his own right- stated that Stagecoach is a perfect blueprint for making a good movie and that watching it is like going to film school. Welles even claimed to have watched Stagecoach more than 40 times in preparation for his own masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941), which came out two years after Stagecoach.
Adventurous
The enduring legacy of Stagecoach, which is considered a timeless classic by movie lovers around the world, is largely due to the captivating screenplay, combining adventure, comedy, drama and subtle romance. Based on the 1937 short story The Stage to Lordsburg by the prolific writer of western fiction Ernest Haycocox, the film is set in 1880 and follows a stagecoach from Tonto, Arizona to Lordsburg, New Mexico, through the territory of Geronimo and his Apache indians, who are on the warpath...
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The action-packed stagecoach chase,
with Yakima Canutt as stunt double for John Wayne. |
Misfits
The stagecoach carries nine, seemingly incompatible passengers:
- the stage driver Buck (Andy Devine)
- the pregnant young lady Lucy Mallory (played by Louise Platt)
- the gambler Hatfield (John Carradine)
- the prostitute Dallas (Claire Trevor)
- the flamboyant alcoholic Doc Josiah Boone (Thomas Mitchell)
- the timid whiskey salesman Samuel Peacock (Donald Meek)
- the unreliable banker Henry Gatewood (Berton Churchill)
- the young cowboy and fugitive Ringo Kid (John Wayne)
- and the marshal Curly Wilcox (George Bancroft), who takes the Ringo Kid in custody.
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From left to right: Buck, Curly, Hatfield,
Peacock, Lucy, Dallas and the Ringo Kid. |
Director John Ford doesn't hide his sympathy for the social misfits in his Stagecoach, preferring the authenticity of the brave Ringo Kid, the lonely prostitute Dallas, the well-mannered gambler Hatfield and the happy-go-lucky drunk Doc Boone to the hypocrisy of so called 'respectable citizens' like the banker, who turns out to be nothing more than a coward and a thief.
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Dallas keeps her pride while she's being
chased out of town by the Law & Order Leage. |
In one of the first scenes, Ford makes fun of the women of the local Law & Order Leage in Tonto, who chase Dallas and Doc Boone out of town, by exposing these women for what they really are: uptight and biased social justice warriors with misguided moral standards, who judge people, without really knowing them, by their appearance instead of by their true character. This nonconformist critique of bourgeois puritanism runs through the film as its underlying theme, which shouldn't surprise anyone, since Ford himself was an old-fashioned, cigar-smoking and whiskey-drinking man, who loathed political correctness.
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Hilarious interaction between the alcoholic Doc Boone (left)
and the whiskey salesman Samuel Peacock. |
Archetypes
In addition to the entertaining story and the crispy dialogues, Stagecoach also features beautiful cinematography (by Bert Glennon), including wide shots of the impressive landscapes (one of Ford's trademarks), a fitting, Oscar-winning musical score (based on old American folk songs) and fine acting, with a breakthrough performance by the young John Wayne in the first starring role of his career as the brave Ringo Kid, a delicate role by Claire Trevor as the disillusioned Dallas, and very funny performances by Thomas Mitchell (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) as the sympathetic drunk Doc Boone and Donald Meek as the soft-spoken whiskey salesman Peacock.
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The famous shot that introduced John Wayne's
breakthrough role as the Ringo Kid to the world. |
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| A wide shot of Monument Valley in Utah. |
Today, almost 80 years after Stagecoach established some of the most recognizable archetypes of the classical western genre -the prostitute with the heart of gold, the dandyish gambler, the funny town drunk, the exciting stagecoach chase, the impressive vistas of Monument Valley, et cetera...- these archetypes have now become clichés. Well, now you know where they originated before they were clichés, and why they became clichés: they were at the heart of Ford's Stagecoach and they worked like a charm.
JN.
Stagecoach - USA - 1939.
Cast: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Thomas Mitchell, Donald Meek, Louise Platt, John Carradine, George Bancroft, Andy Devine and Berton Churchill.
Genre: western / adventure
Watch Stagecoach - full movie.
