Stagecoach

USA (1939)
John Ford, dir.
John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Andy Devine

by Christopher Collier (8/10/07)

Even though it was an established genre since 1903’s The Great Train Robbery, it was John Ford’s 1939 Stagecoach which ushered in the Golden Age of the Western and one its greatest heroes: John Wayne.  Capitalizing on the conventions that had been put in place, Ford’s brilliant film both ignites and re-imagines the genre, moving it from a stationary locale to a great trek across Monument Valley besought by Geronimo and the Apaches.

A collection of strangers boards the stagecoach en route to Lordsburg, each with their own reasons for escaping town.  Alcoholic Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell) and prostitute Dallas (Claire Trevor) are being forced out by a “morality league”.  A well-to-do gambler and “gentleman” (John Carradine) follows a Virginian Calvary officer’s wife (Louise Platt) on her way to her husband.  The rest of the coach is filled with a whiskey salesman (Donald Meek), the Marshal (George Bancroft), and the nervous driver (Andy Devine).  Along the way, they pick up The Ringo Kid (John Wayne), an escaped prisoner on his way to Lordsburg to settle a personal matter.

Thrown together, these nine characters witness all manner of hardships as they make their way trying to avoid the rampaging Apaches.  The first of many films that Ford shot in Monument Valley, Stagecoach turns the Western on its head and instead of an outsider entering a sleepy town, showcasing the genre’s themes of society versus the wilderness (most often with the ranchers and cowboys personifying that wild spirit), the film takes a sampling of all aspects of the town and places them out on their own.  This reversal not only allows for incredible shots of the ever-expansive West, but creates a pulse-pounding plot that the stationary Westerns rarely are capable of while still using all of the typical tropes.  There is no wonder that this film defined the levels of excellence for the genre and welcomed John Wayne as the lead who, in many other John Ford films, would become the embodiment of the American ideal and the face of the West.