Review #1,131: 'Stagecoach' (1939)

Before John Ford's majestic Stagecoach was released in 1939, the western genre was festering in B-movie hell. While we can all now agree that the genre can encompass just about every sort of human experience and underlying theme imaginable, in the 1930s it had become a joke; simplistic and goofy tales of good guys in white versus bad guys in black that were little more than an excuse to deliver an action scene or two. Although he had made a staggering amount of pictures by the time he directed Stagecoach, John Ford left it relatively late in his career to become the lauded auteur he would be remembered as being when he adapted Ernest Haycox's short story The Stage to Lordsburg.

Stagecoach is special indeed. Not only did it revitalise a flailing genre, but it seems to give birth to another - something more classical, thoughtful and mythical. This is, in part, down to the casting of John Wayne as The Ringo Kid, an actor who became so synonymous with the role that he spent his entire career both embracing and running away from it. Already a veteran of around eighty movies made for 'Poverty Row', the still-young Duke was only cast after Ford stubbornly insisted on it, while the studio wanted Gary Cooper. Ford knew he would be a star, and the director certainly gives him an introduction worthy of a screen giant. As we first meet the Kid, cocking his rifle as a tracking shot brings us close to his face, it's inconceivable just how Ford was the only one to recognise his screen presence.

Yet Wayne is only one of a magnificent ensemble of characters flung together in the claustrophobic stagecoach as it heads closer towards towards hostile Indian territory. Everyone on board seems to wrestle with their own vice or prejudice, including effeminate whiskey salesman Peacock (Donald Meek), brooding Southern gambler Hatfield (John Carradine), and shifty banker Gatewood (Berton Churchill). The two largest roles go to Claire Trevor as kind-hearted prostitute Dallas and Thomas Mitchell as the alcoholic Doc Boone, the latter winning an Academy Award for his efforts as the blow-hard whose realisation of his own flaws become his redemption. The two are set on their journey after being thrown out of town by the 'Ladies' Law and Order League' - a group of busybodies who begrudge any sort of moral taint on their town - as Doc cries social prejudice.

The idea of social prejudice being rampant in a country guilty of its own recent atrocities is a key theme running throughout, and Stagecoach is a surprisingly liberal movie, despite the depiction of the screaming Apaches, who play the enemy here. We spend a lot of time with the characters before we get to climactic action sequence, but the skill in which they are drawn and played, along with the fascination of watching these shunned personas unite against a common goal, means it never feels like Ford is making us wait. The Apache attack is a high-speed work of technical brilliance, featuring stunt work so nail-biting that you won't even stop to ponder why they don't just shoot the horses. It's so memorable that you'll forgive the redundant second climax featuring the Ringo Kid's unfinished business with the Plummer gang, and the sentiment that comes with it. Arguably the finest American western ever made,


Directed by: John Ford
Starring: Claire Trevor, John Wayne, Andy Devine, Thomas Mitchell, John Carradine, Louise Platt
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie