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#571 - Stagecoach
John Ford, 1939
A stagecoach carrying a varied collection of individuals from one frontier town to another runs into trouble.
Stagecoach has a somewhat intimidating reputation as one of the greatest early Westerns and is a generally well-made film full stop (I remember reading somewhere that Orson Welles watched Stagecoach multiple times in preparation for filming Citizen Kane, which sounds like testament enough to its own quality as a film). At the very least, it's got a solid high concept that allows for good character-based drama thanks to the mismatched ensemble that board a stagecoach going from one town to another. In addition to the sheepish driver and the grizzled sheriff riding shotgun, the passengers include an army wife looking to reunite with her husband, a sex worker getting run out of town by the local temperance league, an alcoholic doctor, a timid whiskey salesman, a Southern gambler, and a banker going on the run after embezzling thousands of dollars from his branch. Along the way, they pick up an outlaw who is searching for the man that killed his father and brother. Oh, and with this being an old Western there is also the looming threat of a tribe of Native Americans threatening to descend upon anything that comes through their territory, and guess where the stagecoach is headed...
While Stagecoach doesn't quite feel like an absolute classic, it definitely has enough quality to it to live up to most of its reputation. The characters may be somewhat broad and the performances certainly play to that broadness for better or worse. A good example of the former is Thomas Mitchell's scenery-chewing performance as the alcoholic doctor who is very quick to befriend the whiskey vendor and blithely talk his way around any complication, albeit a character who is sensible enough to give up when things are truly perilous for the group. John Wayne, here playing the vengeful outlaw, displays his usual potent combination of swagger and bravado but still makes for a halfway convincing romantic partner with Claire Trevor's scarlet woman (though that's more likely to do with how quickly things progress during the film's extremely compressed timeframe). The interplay between the characters is also solid, especially when the safety of the group is threatened by circumstances such as being forced to hole up inside an abandoned outpost or actual Natives launching their attacks. Even in the quieter moments, there are good instances of friction such as the strained relationship between Trevor and Louise Pratt's extremely prim and proper army wife. Cramming together disparate personalities and seeing them bounce off each other isn't always as much of a guarantee of dramatic fireworks as you would expect, but the characters in Stagecoach are developed well enough both individually and together to make it all work, enough so that it becomes the film's main strength more so than the expectation of any external action being visited upon or perpetuated by the main characters.
That isn't to say that Stagecoach lacks good action. It's certainly got its moments, though I could question its pacing a bit - one sequence late in the film feels so thoroughly climatic that when it finished I was initially surprised to see that the movie was still going and had consciously remind myself that, yes, there were still plenty of plot strands that needed resolution. The film's actual resolution may be slightly more low-key but it's still engaging and concludes the film with an impressive economy of storytelling. Now that I think about, "impressive economy of storytelling" would be a good way of summing up what makes Stagecoach good. It has a theatrical premise and its cast plays into that nicely, providing good characters that can be rooted for or against to various degrees. Though the film doesn't try to humanise the villainous Natives, it at least offers a somewhat decent justification by having their presence foreshadowed by a member of a different tribe with whom they have a bitter rivalry - again, another instance of economic storytelling that offers a simple but effective explanation for the film's seemingly unfair treatment of Natives. It's also technically competent and appropriately devoid of flashiness (albeit with the occasional impressive stunt or technique). I can definitely vouch for it as a classic Western that deserves to be seen even if your tastes don't lean towards Westerns.
John Ford, 1939
A stagecoach carrying a varied collection of individuals from one frontier town to another runs into trouble.
Stagecoach has a somewhat intimidating reputation as one of the greatest early Westerns and is a generally well-made film full stop (I remember reading somewhere that Orson Welles watched Stagecoach multiple times in preparation for filming Citizen Kane, which sounds like testament enough to its own quality as a film). At the very least, it's got a solid high concept that allows for good character-based drama thanks to the mismatched ensemble that board a stagecoach going from one town to another. In addition to the sheepish driver and the grizzled sheriff riding shotgun, the passengers include an army wife looking to reunite with her husband, a sex worker getting run out of town by the local temperance league, an alcoholic doctor, a timid whiskey salesman, a Southern gambler, and a banker going on the run after embezzling thousands of dollars from his branch. Along the way, they pick up an outlaw who is searching for the man that killed his father and brother. Oh, and with this being an old Western there is also the looming threat of a tribe of Native Americans threatening to descend upon anything that comes through their territory, and guess where the stagecoach is headed...
While Stagecoach doesn't quite feel like an absolute classic, it definitely has enough quality to it to live up to most of its reputation. The characters may be somewhat broad and the performances certainly play to that broadness for better or worse. A good example of the former is Thomas Mitchell's scenery-chewing performance as the alcoholic doctor who is very quick to befriend the whiskey vendor and blithely talk his way around any complication, albeit a character who is sensible enough to give up when things are truly perilous for the group. John Wayne, here playing the vengeful outlaw, displays his usual potent combination of swagger and bravado but still makes for a halfway convincing romantic partner with Claire Trevor's scarlet woman (though that's more likely to do with how quickly things progress during the film's extremely compressed timeframe). The interplay between the characters is also solid, especially when the safety of the group is threatened by circumstances such as being forced to hole up inside an abandoned outpost or actual Natives launching their attacks. Even in the quieter moments, there are good instances of friction such as the strained relationship between Trevor and Louise Pratt's extremely prim and proper army wife. Cramming together disparate personalities and seeing them bounce off each other isn't always as much of a guarantee of dramatic fireworks as you would expect, but the characters in Stagecoach are developed well enough both individually and together to make it all work, enough so that it becomes the film's main strength more so than the expectation of any external action being visited upon or perpetuated by the main characters.
That isn't to say that Stagecoach lacks good action. It's certainly got its moments, though I could question its pacing a bit - one sequence late in the film feels so thoroughly climatic that when it finished I was initially surprised to see that the movie was still going and had consciously remind myself that, yes, there were still plenty of plot strands that needed resolution. The film's actual resolution may be slightly more low-key but it's still engaging and concludes the film with an impressive economy of storytelling. Now that I think about, "impressive economy of storytelling" would be a good way of summing up what makes Stagecoach good. It has a theatrical premise and its cast plays into that nicely, providing good characters that can be rooted for or against to various degrees. Though the film doesn't try to humanise the villainous Natives, it at least offers a somewhat decent justification by having their presence foreshadowed by a member of a different tribe with whom they have a bitter rivalry - again, another instance of economic storytelling that offers a simple but effective explanation for the film's seemingly unfair treatment of Natives. It's also technically competent and appropriately devoid of flashiness (albeit with the occasional impressive stunt or technique). I can definitely vouch for it as a classic Western that deserves to be seen even if your tastes don't lean towards Westerns.