Stagecoach (1939)
Stagecoach on the IMDb
Return to the Main Index
Warner Brothers, 2-Disc Special Edition. Available individually or as part
of the John Wayne-John Ford Film Collection
I was excited when I saw this title scheduled for DVD release, so I jumped the gun and ordered the individual title rather than splurging for the whole Wayne-Ford Collection. Probably stupid, but I hadn't watched Stagecoach in about 10 years and had missed the John Wayne and John Ford American Experiences documentary when it had aired on PBS a few weeks ago, so I figured I'd just go with the single movie for now. The second disc includes the approximately 80 minute PBS documentary as well as a second 30 minute documentary titled Stagecoach: A Story of Redemption. The PBS American Masters documentary sold me on Fort Apache, which I ordered before it was even over. Fort Apache is, of course, another title that can be had when purchasing the entire John Wayne - John Ford Film Collection, so that's two. I know I'll eventually order The Searchers, so I probably should have paid for the whole set right from the get-go!
As I had mentioned it had been about ten years since I last watched Stagecoach, and I've seen it about four times now overall. It is without a doubt one of my favorite Westerns, and deservedly so, as it is more or less universally heralded as one of the top few in the genre. Personally, I'm not a fan of Westerns, though you'll see several of the higher quality titles made over the years on my list. I'm of the opinion that if a Western is good, it's really good, but if it's bad it's usually so bad it shouldn't have been made. Movies falling into the middle-ground are few and far between as just about every Western title I can recall either stirs memories of greatness or outright disgust.
If you like movies where all of the characters, who are, of course, very different from one another, are gathered into one tight space where they must co-exist, live, love, fight, etc., then this is your type of movie. It most reminds me of Hitchcock's Lifeboat, actually. You should catch Stagecoach even if you're not a fan of Westerns, because the first hour or so could have really taken place in any cramped setting. The characters are the ones driving the story, but we have two big confrontations laid-out for us from the start and looming at the end of the picture. First there is the constant threat of the Apache, and second is John Wayne seeking revenge on the outlaw who killed his family. From the get-go, you know both conflicts will occur.
I will echo the common first comment about Stagecoach and agree that John Wayne's entrance is one of the best in film history. That entrance I believe is what first attracted me to this film as a teen-ager. I mean, c'mon, how cool is this guy? I'll go so far as to call it one of my two favorite film entrances of all-time (the other being Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man).
My favorite character in Stagecoach though is not Wayne's Ringo, it is actually the menacing John Carradine. He plays Hatfield, a man of some mystery, who we learn throughout the movie is a card player, a veteran of the Confederacy, and has been accused by one of the characters (Doc, I think) of shooting a man in the back. You know that Hatfield is not a good man, but he is certainly not an entirely bad man either. He has boarded the stage to keep watch over the prim, proper, and pregnant Lucy Mallory, played by Louise Platt. Even that relationship is somewhat vague, I had always believed that Hatfield was in love with the Platt character, but after watching the other night I am now convinced that he is guarding her out of respect for her father, who Hatfield served under in the War. I don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't seen it, but when the Apache attack, the Carradine character is confronted with a deep moral question, which he quickly decides upon. Not a word is uttered in the scene I'm discussing, and it's no more than half a minute long, but I think it showed best what Hatfield was all about.
Other characters in Stagecoach are Claire Trevor, playing a prostitute who has been rushed out of town by a sober WCTU-looking group of older women; Thomas Mitchell as the Doc, also banished from town for being a deadbeat drunk; Donald Meek is a liquor salesman and soon Doc's best buddy on board, Berton Churchill is a crooked banker (and I can't get Sydney Greenstreet out of my head whenever I see this character, the fat man from The Maltese Falcon would have been perfectly cast!); Andy Devine drives the Stagecoach and according to the shorter documentary he almost had too -- apparently there were very few professional actors in Hollywood who could drive a stagecoach being pulled by six-horses; George Bancroft as the Marshall sitting up front on the stage with Devine and keeping a close eye on the Duke's Ringo; and Platt as I mentioned is the respectable woman seeking to reunite with her husband. I've sold a few old stills of Platt, and they went strong, but otherwise I've never seen her before or since. Tim Holt also has a small part leading the cavalry and Western star Tom Tyler is the thug that the Duke has targeted.
Back to the PBS American Masters documentary included on disc 2, I would have paid the price of Stagecoach just for this doc! It covers both men's careers, Ford's since joining his brother Francis to work on silents, and Wayne's from his college football days, through to their deaths, concentrating on those films on which they worked together. Like I said, the clips and commentary about Fort Apache made me get up, go to the computer, and order the film while the documentary was still playing! Loaded with scenes from their films, clips of interviews with both John Wayne and John Ford, and commentary from a few of the usual film historians, some Wayne and Ford experts, their children and grandchildren, The Filmmaker & The Legend accomplishes what it sets out to do in presenting us with Wayne and Ford both as individuals and as a working pair.
- Home
- Shopping
- Blog
- Movie Stars
- Movie Collectibles
- More Movies
- Magazines
- magawiki