Stagecoach (1939)

1) John Ford, the director of Stagecoach (1939), is labeled the master of the Western genre in our Flashback text (p. 150). A man whose career spanned over five decades, Ford has become an embodiment of American cinema. A master storyteller of American experiences, his style was of “a rough simplicity,” dealing with themes of “family, duty, and stubborn individualism” (p. 152). His strength of visual was evident in his use of wondrous landscapes, the most iconic being the Utah/Arizona border’s Monument Valley. He captured these places with a “lyricism and compositional beauty rarely matched in cinema” (p. 152). For his characters, he kept camera movement minimalistic and allowed them to approach and tell their story. He utilized a concise focus on characterizations and development. As his skill matured, Ford combined a naturalistic approach with a poetically Irish flare. The overall tone of his body of work was melancholic, preoccupied with loss, regret, and isolation. A great many of his movies featured ‘unhappy’ endings, fixated on the truth that defeat is commonplace in reality. For this reason, Stagecoach stands as an earlier, more hopeful work of Ford’s. The survival of the film’s band of travelers against incredible odds, the birth of a baby, and the “mutual respect and love” (p. 153) that grew alongside these triumphs stand in contrast to Ford’s later, bleaker work. For Ford, Stagecoach was a return to his most-acclaimed genre after thirteen years, and his first sound Western.

2) Article URL: http://www.filmsite.org/stagec.html/ 

  

The Filmsite website is owned by AMC Networks and contains what film critic and columnist Roger Ebert calls "an invaluable repository of movie descriptions and dialogue.” The article I have linked to contains a comprehensive analysis of Stagecoach. Split into two tidy sections: “Background” and “The Story,” the article gives a succinct rundown of the significance of the film, its recognition in terms of Academy Awards, its story structure, and the characters. The thorough breakdown of the film’s plot spans four pages. Calling the film revolutionary and influential, the article states:

           

“(Stagecoach) is considered a landmark quintessential film that elevated westerns from cheaply-made, low-grade, Saturday matinee "B" films to a serious adult genre - one with greater sophistication, richer Western archetypes and themes, in-depth and complex characterizations, and greater profitability and popularity as well.”

Indeed a lavish train of compliments. The article goes on to praise and explain the specific facets of the film. One of the most notable is the sophisticated screenplay which was based on a magazine short story and a French story about a prostitute traveling through war-torn France during the Prussian occupation with refugees who are members of the French bourgeoisie. Up next is a listing of all the character types in the film, from the Confederate gambler to the embezzling banker to the whiskey salesman. They “act out in their relationships their representative social types” and serve to examine major social issues and themes. The article also notes that the film has a neat, eight-episode structure, with four major scenes of character interaction alternating with four major scenes of action. The rest of the article explains the plot of the film and its messages down to the quoting of entire dialogue passages. It would be tough to call it a mere summary as it’s essentially a play-by-play of the film from beginning to end. That being said, this Filmsite article makes for a great, well-thought-out read.

3) The Filmsite article helped me see how influential Stagecoach was in the sense that it was such a formulaic, prototypical film. Or rather, it helped in a big way define the Western formula by being such a well-crafted prototype. Even down to Ringo’s shootout with the Plummer brothers at the film’s end, in which according to Filmsite, the “standard for future standoffs on dusty Western streets was set.” Stagecoach also helped pioneer the film equivalent of literature’s classic motley crew trope, whereby an odd assembly of characters from various backgrounds come together for a journey. In the case of the film, the characters were well-written and well-acted. There was a genuine sense of growth for the group, as they traveled with the fear of an imminent Apache attack together. They experienced the aftermath of an Apache attack at the ferry together. They saw a child come into the world in the midst of the chaos and panic together. They faced the Apaches in combat together. The characters had an actual arc, rather than being faceless partakers in random shootouts. Stagecoach features many classic staples of Westerns, action films, and film in general. The article’s observing of the film’s eight-episode structure also showed me how the film worked by a formula as well as helping pioneer a few. A clear story arc, a fleshed-out band of characters, villains in the form of Apache Indians, a love story, and a happy ending. Stagecoach really is a classic example of a modern film, and for that, it is forever influential.

4) Stagecoach had a lot to say about society by way of its characters and their respective places in it, which still existed in then-modern day 1939. They still exist today, which is why the impact remains. The greedy banker, the sympathetic drunk, the likeable rouge; these are personalities types that don’t go out of fashion. For audiences, this great selection of characters allowed them to see themselves in the film. Or to see someone else and maybe alter their thinking about them or at least get them thinking. Ford’s film allowed these characters to be actual human beings with convictions as opposed to generic good guys and bad guys bent on shooting each other for no discernible reason. Just as our textbook mentioned, Ford used the theme of family by creating a “surrogate family, an interdependent group bonding together for the sake of mutual survival” (p 153). The characters put aside their personal differences to bring a baby into the world and fight off Indians. The film had an inspiring sophistication to it. Orson Welles, director of the even more classic Citizen Kane, was reported to have seen Stagecoach forty times before making his grand opus. Roger Ebert believes Welles learned from the film a “lean editing style.” People talk about films being the inspiration for future films. What better an example than that? Stagecoach is an archetype Western made by the master of the genre himself. A master that made visuals one of his calling cards. With this film, Ford made his first of seven uses of Monument Valley and captured the essence of the rugged Old West while shaping cinematic language for future filmmakers. Ford would go on to make other great Westerns such as The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, but Stagecoach was his first in sound. A complete shift from silent, John Ford stepped into this new world of cinema with a classic right off the bat. The man lives on as an American icon who earned the distinction of auteur and defined a film genre, leaving behind massive shoes to fill.