Stagecoach (1939)Director: John Ford
My four-star first impression of Stagecoach upon my first viewing was that it was a very fun western. I now think it's something more than that.
Stagecoach is a film, like Casablanca, that exploits stereotypes as archetypes to address real issues at a fundamental moral level as popular entertainment. This is about as good as Hollywood ever got during its Golden Age to making art -- which is to say Hollywood could do quite well! It's broad-stroke art, with little enough nuance, but a great deal of depth communicated via short-hand. Ford communicates so much with a camera that, as a crash course in the art of film in preparing to make Citizen Kane, Orson Welles is said to have watched Stagecoach over forty times.
It's so beautiful. Monument Valley crowned with majestic clouds. Horses, riders, and stagecoaches rolling along at break-neck speeds. Dallas exiting the low adobe house through a long hallway, the encroaching feeling of civilization that communicates. This is film as film!
The stereotypes, and perhaps more interesting, their relationships, are compelling. The City, the Desert, and Man; Civilization, the Savage, and the Outcast. Inside the stagecoach, the characters get to know each other, confront their own selves, and make difficult choices. Most of them will have a chance at redemption, but only two will truly escape themselves and the "blessings of civilization."
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