The remarkable thing about Ford's Westerns is his gift for simultaneously contemplating people as individuals and as representatives of virtues, vices, and other abstract qualities
"Stagecoach" is the Western to combine successfully the poetic grandeur and sense of myth-making of the real and imagery West with pure entertainment values It is the Western in which the public first saw Monument Valley, Utah on film a place that Ford would revisit again and again, and that became his favorite location for the exterior sequences of his Westerns It is the first Western to combine successfully the poetic grandeur and sense of myth-making of the real and imaginary West with pure entertainment values... It is so rich it has become a treasury of Western characters and motifs Prior to 'Stagecoach,' the western was in grievous decline, but with 'Stagecoach' a renaissance occurred...
"Stagecoach" makes much capital out of an early means of communication Ford used it as a symbol there is nothing more striking, as an image of loneliness, than a long-shot of a coach twisting its way through the arid and dry South-Western landscape but also as a box for shaking and mixing human drama The combination is devastating Despite some complaining criticism that there is just a little too much contrivance about the selection of passengers riding in the 'box', that they look as if they've been handpicked for contrast and for drama, "Stagecoach" always repays another look It still works admirably Time takes little away from it
Everything seems to fit in "Stagecoach" from the first moment that the camera races in on the imposing figure of John Wayne, a man of heroic size with a powerful stance, twirling his Winchester rifle in one hand to the gallery of colorful portraits in a shaking box to the dramatic black and white photography taking advantage of every trick of light and shade including cloudscapes and silhouettes
Ford carefully selected 'characters' boxed in for a troublesome ride They are not characters, save perhaps for the drunken doctor, in the usual Ford sense of beloved eccentrics They are highly contrasted 'types' who, by some alchemy that the movie develops, do grow to some extent into credible human beings
Apart from the drunken Doc (superb1y played by Thomas Mitchell), there's the mysterious southern gambler (John Carradine), a pregnant wife (Louise Platt) joining her soldier husband, a Whisky salesman (Donald Meek) who could kid anyone at first sightespecially an audiencethat he's a parson, a whore with a heart of gold (Claire Trevor), and an absconding banker (Barton Churchill). Andy Devine is in the driving seat, George Bancroft, as a U.S. Marshal, rides shot-gun and keeps a wary though fatherly eye on the Ringo Kid (john Wayne) who has come along for at least part of the ride...
Two things are at once apparent Ford is employing a dramatic device for which there is plenty of precedentcompressing diverse characters into a confined and highly charged situation in the certainty of reactions, and, secondly, that the Claire Trevor character is the spitting image, as they say, of Maupassant's tart, Boule de Suife
Geronimo will be the catalyst for this load of combustibles He's on the loose again and the escorting cavalry have already had to say their farewells to the coach party
Along the way you will also see: The birth of a child, the telegraph lines cut, an attack by Indians, a chase, a cavalry rescue, a poker game, a three-against-one gunfight on the streets of a town, and an exciting climax
"Stagecoach" leaves a whole host of abiding impressions There is the dramatic black and white photography taking advantage of every trick of light and shade in the wonderful Monument Valley location It was the first time that Ford had used this setting within the Navajo Indian reservation around and about the Arizona-Utah state dividing line The eroded lunar landscape has its own beauty and its own menace and these two qualities are reflected in the film Cloudscapes and silhouettesthese linger on.
"Stagecoach" bulged with all the required ingredients of the classic Western It carried a full complement of the historic-pioneering elements and it also made room for that other constituent, the domestic law and order issue
"Stagecoach" is the Western to combine successfully the poetic grandeur and sense of myth-making of the real and imagery West with pure entertainment values It is the Western in which the public first saw Monument Valley, Utah on film a place that Ford would revisit again and again, and that became his favorite location for the exterior sequences of his Westerns It is the first Western to combine successfully the poetic grandeur and sense of myth-making of the real and imaginary West with pure entertainment values... It is so rich it has become a treasury of Western characters and motifs Prior to 'Stagecoach,' the western was in grievous decline, but with 'Stagecoach' a renaissance occurred...
"Stagecoach" makes much capital out of an early means of communication Ford used it as a symbol there is nothing more striking, as an image of loneliness, than a long-shot of a coach twisting its way through the arid and dry South-Western landscape but also as a box for shaking and mixing human drama The combination is devastating Despite some complaining criticism that there is just a little too much contrivance about the selection of passengers riding in the 'box', that they look as if they've been handpicked for contrast and for drama, "Stagecoach" always repays another look It still works admirably Time takes little away from it
Everything seems to fit in "Stagecoach" from the first moment that the camera races in on the imposing figure of John Wayne, a man of heroic size with a powerful stance, twirling his Winchester rifle in one hand to the gallery of colorful portraits in a shaking box to the dramatic black and white photography taking advantage of every trick of light and shade including cloudscapes and silhouettes
Ford carefully selected 'characters' boxed in for a troublesome ride They are not characters, save perhaps for the drunken doctor, in the usual Ford sense of beloved eccentrics They are highly contrasted 'types' who, by some alchemy that the movie develops, do grow to some extent into credible human beings
Apart from the drunken Doc (superb1y played by Thomas Mitchell), there's the mysterious southern gambler (John Carradine), a pregnant wife (Louise Platt) joining her soldier husband, a Whisky salesman (Donald Meek) who could kid anyone at first sightespecially an audiencethat he's a parson, a whore with a heart of gold (Claire Trevor), and an absconding banker (Barton Churchill). Andy Devine is in the driving seat, George Bancroft, as a U.S. Marshal, rides shot-gun and keeps a wary though fatherly eye on the Ringo Kid (john Wayne) who has come along for at least part of the ride...
Two things are at once apparent Ford is employing a dramatic device for which there is plenty of precedentcompressing diverse characters into a confined and highly charged situation in the certainty of reactions, and, secondly, that the Claire Trevor character is the spitting image, as they say, of Maupassant's tart, Boule de Suife
Geronimo will be the catalyst for this load of combustibles He's on the loose again and the escorting cavalry have already had to say their farewells to the coach party
Along the way you will also see: The birth of a child, the telegraph lines cut, an attack by Indians, a chase, a cavalry rescue, a poker game, a three-against-one gunfight on the streets of a town, and an exciting climax
"Stagecoach" leaves a whole host of abiding impressions There is the dramatic black and white photography taking advantage of every trick of light and shade in the wonderful Monument Valley location It was the first time that Ford had used this setting within the Navajo Indian reservation around and about the Arizona-Utah state dividing line The eroded lunar landscape has its own beauty and its own menace and these two qualities are reflected in the film Cloudscapes and silhouettesthese linger on.
"Stagecoach" bulged with all the required ingredients of the classic Western It carried a full complement of the historic-pioneering elements and it also made room for that other constituent, the domestic law and order issue