Movie Review – Stagecoach (1939)
Principal Cast : Claire Trevor, John Wayne, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell, Louise Pratt, George Bancroft, Donald Meek, Berton Churchill, Tim Holt, Tom Tyler, Chief John Big Tree, Nora Cecil, Francis Ford, Brenda Fowler, William Hopper, Duke R Lee, Chris-Pin Martin, Vester Pegg, Jack Pennick, Elvira Rios, Joe Rickson.
Synopsis: A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo and learn something about each other in the process.
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Blessed with an absolute surfeit of legendary Hollywood screen icons, a below-the-line pedigree that cannot be undersold, and the epic backdrop of Monument Valley and numerous other immediately notable United States filming locations, John Ford’s superb 1939 action drama Stagecoach remains a supercharged, idealised representation of the hopefulness of the American Dream, and a film that’s impossible to criticise. Led by John Wayne, in what was his breakout role, popular leading lady Claire Trevor (co-star alongside Humphrey Bogart in Dead End, and future Oscar-winner for Key Largo), and the familial tones of Andy Devine (better known to modern audiences as the voice of Friar Tuck in Disney’s animated Robin Hood), Stagecoach boasts Ford’s charismatic storytelling techniques and ability to carve legitimate All-American iconography from his location photography. Interestingly, for a film set largely in and through Monument Valley, there is maybe only two or three minutes total of footage shot in the legendary location, but it matters not; haunting this astonishingly engaging classic is an ever-present sense of mythology and legendarium, a fable of frontierism that, despite considerably problematic racial stereotypes for the time, psychologically certifies this film as a piece of legitimate artisanal genius.
Plot synopsis courtesy Wikipedia: The film follows a disparate group of travellers as they journey through dangerous Apache territory aboard a stagecoach. The ensemble cast includes John Wayne as the rugged outlaw Ringo Kid, Claire Trevor as the ostracised yet kind-hearted prostitute Dallas, Thomas Mitchell (in an Oscar-winning role) as the alcoholic doctor Doc Boone, and John Carradine as the enigmatic Southern gentleman Hatfield. Alongside them are Louise Platt as a pregnant officer’s wife, George Bancroft as the gruff marshal, Donald Meek as a timid whiskey salesman, and Berton Churchill as a corrupt banker. As tensions rise within the cramped confines of the coach, the travellers must put aside their prejudices to survive both personal conflicts and an impending Apache attack, culminating in a thrilling showdown and Ringo’s bid for redemption.
While a lot has been said about John Ford’s use of the American landscape for his feature films, and more specifically his repeated shooting in Arizona’s famous Monument Valley, just south of the San Juan River, Stagecoach’s success as a film sits gloriously adjacent to the buttes and mesa’s of Ford’s cinematography in the form of a sublime ensemble cast of leading actors. John Wayne may be the most notable – or notorious – name amongst the cavalcade of talent Ford assembled, but he’s by no means the least. The full roster of lead roles is an absolute feast of Oscar-calibre talent, alongside Claire Trevor’s hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Dallas comes the likes of John Carradine (Preacher Casey in The Grapes Of Wrath, again for John Ford, a year later), Louise Pratt (Captain Caution, alongside bona-fide hunk Victor Mature in 1940), the instantly recognisable Donald Meek (Mr Poppins in the 1938 Best Picture-winner You Can’t Take It With You, co-starring with James Stewart), and Best Actor nominee George Bancroft (Thunderbolt, Mr Deeds Goes To Town) – it’s a case of golden age screen icons everywhere you turn here, and the film is arguably the better for it. These are actors who know how to use the camera, who can say so much with a wink, a glance, a sly look or a piercing dagger of anger, augmenting their respective characters where even Dudley Nichols’ screenplay can’t quite manage it.
This magnificent cast all play a grab-bag of disparate, disorganised frontier folk who are using the titular stagecoach to travel from point A to point B, utilising the plot device of potential Apache Indian attack as a catalyst for their speed. It’s an easy to understand conceit, this one, having since been used in a variety of forms for a century since, to the point it’s become a sub-trope of the filmmaking shorthand employed by directors and writers across the world. The screenplay here is based on a short story by Ernest Haycox, “The Stage To Lordsburg”, and while I would estimate the complexity of the writer’s endeavours might have been sieved through a lens of pragmatic patriotism, Ford’s ability to shorthand in class and social castes as a populist mechanism for commentary of modern society is as truly arrow-straight as any Native American shaft. Wayne’s ubiquitous rogue with a dark past (introduced with a camera shot that screams “America, fuck yeah!”), Trevor’s soft-focused turn as a prostitute who doesn’t really seem all that keen on being a prostitute, and Thomas Mitchell’s sodden drunkard medical doctor are all quick-and-easy takes that offer little depth but plenty of narrative grist for the burgeoning American social order, an analogous triplicate to alcoholism, lawlessness (a throwback to the real cowboys of the Old West), and the ostracization of women supporting themselves; while Stagecoach isn’t quite as highbrow as my description might engender, Ford’s ability to make each leading character identifiable through motif or silhouette is incredibly clever.
Quickly establishing the main plot and getting our ensemble to board the four-wheeled deathtrap of Old West stagecoaches, Ford and his cinematographer Bert Glennon give the film a real sense of wide-open energy and propulsion. The… freewheeling nature of the film’s quest-adjacent plot (pun intended) and some breathtaking old-school location photography absolutely sets the tone for this operatic, often intensely charming work of fiction, and although perhaps not as action packed as it could have been (the Apache’s are depicted as a particularly brutal tribe of warrior Indians, although the tone taken by the film pushes the “savages” undercurrent rather than a people fighting for control of their own lands) when the shit kicks off in the third act, Stagecoach becomes quite the thrilling spectacle. Stunts, breathless editing (kudos to Otho Lovering and Dorothy Spencer for their work in the film’s final reels, in which both a stagecoach pursuit and a dark-street showdown looms as bookends to an otherwise expository narrative) and a genius sense of tension and pacing bring the film’s surprise extended ending into a cathartic release for audiences who’ve grown to love what critics would ostentatiously describe as a gang of ratbags.
Oh, how I adored Stagecoach. It’s a genuine film made for the love of, and lovers of, the medium. It personifies Hollywood of old, the kind of character-driven dramatic works that sizzle on the screen thanks to superb casting and well-written scripting in the hands of a master visualist. John Ford might have made better movies, but I would argue that Stagecoach is emblematic of an entire generation of directors for its width, pace, incredible stunts and achingly iconic cinematography – Glennon lost out in the Black and White Cinematography category to Gregg Toland’s work in Wuthering Heights – shouldered by a Blue Chip ensemble cast turning in memorable performances. Thomas Mitchell was the only one of the cast nominated for an acting category that year, but I’d argue that John Carradine or, yes, even John Wayne should have had a place on those lists. Carradine’s enigmatic Mr Hatfield, reminiscent of a non-tuberculotic Doc Holliday as played by Val Kilmer in Tombstone, is the film’s surprise package for me, while Wayne personifies pure Americana in a way he traded on for most of his career. In any case, whatever history might suggest, Stagecoach is a remarkably engaging and enthralling action drama that delivers character piece after character piece, before summoning a breathless carriage chase and gunfight showdown that will have you on the edge of your seat. A bona-fide bonanza for film fans, this is one stagecoach that delivers every time.
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