A Critics' View of John Ford's Stagecoach (1939)

By Susan Swan (http://suite101.com/a/a-critics-view-of-john-fords-stagecoach-1939-a126438)

At its simplest, Stagecoach is the story of a journey across the New Mexico Territory for nine people who face trials of revenge, childbirth, and Apache attack. It is notable for being a film in which the underdogs win, John Wayne becomes a star, and Monument Valley makes its debut in Ford’s work.

Character Development, Psychological Themes Move Beyond Western Stereotypes

Bogdanovich calls the characters “a group of misfits” (p.134). Ford and Dudley themselves, as director and screenwriter, bragged about the “subversive nature of their achievement,” claiming they were “particularly attached” to Stagecoach because “it violates all the censorial canons” with a lead man who kills three men, a lead female who is a prostitute, a banker who robs his own bank, a pregnant woman who faints, a notorious gambler who is a gunman, and a drunk who gets violently ill (McBride, p. 283).

Almost nothing is what it seems to be in Stagecoach and its use of psychological drama revitalized the western genre, moving beyond cardboard stereotypes to develop emotionally complex characters. It was, as Bogdanovich notes in the 2006 DVD commentary, the first really “intimate” western, the first “adult” or “modern” western, a film less about the epic nature of the west and more a study of a select group of people. It also introduced politics in a new way, offering a “scathing critique of capitalist corruption and Republican hypocrisy, and a celebration of the egalitarian values of the New Deal” (McBride, p. 283).

Hollywood Returns to the A-Western with Stagecoach as the Top Movie

Westerns had always been popular in Hollywood. In the decade after talkies debuted, hundreds were released. Almost all were B westerns and serials, churned out often in as little as 5 days. This era also introduced the cowboy singers, most notably Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the Sons of the Pioneers. A-list directors seemed to avoid westerns. Even Ford, who was renowned for his westerns of the silent era, including The Iron Horse(1924), did not make his first sound western until 1939, the year he made both Stagecoach and Drums Along the Mohawk.

Stagecoach was not the only A western of its time. It was part of a larger renaissance of western films across Hollywood; along with swashbucklers and costume epics, they offered popular escapism in the pre-World War II era. While there were only three A westerns in 1937 and four in 1938, according to McBride, Schatz shows that 1939 to 1941 brought 30 A westerns to the screen. In 1939 alone, this included Dodge City, Jesse James, The Oklahoma Kid, and Cecil B. DeMille’s Union Pacific .Stagecoach is the only one of all of the films of the Western Renaissance though to have achieved critical acclaim and “the one Western of the period routinely singled out by critics—then and now—as a work of exceptional narrative and cinematic quality” (Schatz, p.21).

Critical Acclaim for Stagecoach from its Release, Included Two Oscars

Stagecoach was a financial success, grossing almost a million dollars in the first 10 months of release, returning almost double its cost to Walter Wanger studios (McBride). It also received critical recognition immediately. On its 3 March 1939 release, Frank S. Nugent’s New York Times review called Stagecoach "a motion picture that sings a song of camera" (McBride, p. 284). It was listed as a top 10 picture of 1939 by theNational Review and the New York Times. It received seven Academy Awards nominations—including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Black and White Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration, and Best Film Editing—and won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor (Thomas Mitchell) and Best Score (which wove together 17 western folk songs). This is especially remarkable as 1939 was a banner year for film, featuring Gone with the Wind, the Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights, among other notable films. Stagecoach also earned John Ford the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director.

Stagecoach continues to receive acclaim today. It was on the 1997 American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movies list and is ninth on the 2008 AFI Top 10 Westerns list. It was added to the National Film Registry in 1995 and is one of Vanity Fair’s 50 Greatest Films and Filmsite’s 100 Greatest Films. It is twelfth of HistoryNet’'s 100 Greatest Western Movies and, most recently, was named one of 15 Most Influential Classic Movies by Turner Classic Movies.

Film Critic Bazin on Stagecoach as “Consummate” Renaissance Western

French film analyst André Bazin offers a view of Stagecoach that helps one understand why it is still considered one of the most influential Westerns ever. He saw Stagecoach as a film in which “art has found its perfect balance, an ideal form of expression;” it was a film to be admired for its “dramatic and moral themes to which the cinema…has given a grandeur, [and] an artistic effectiveness” (p.29). To Bazin, Stagecoach was “the consummate renaissance Western,” a film in which “John Ford struck the ideal balance between social myth, historical reconstruction, psychological truth, and the traditional theme of the Western mise-en-scène” (Shartz, p. 22).

Bazin’s assessment captures the essence of a film that David O. Selznick dismissed as “just another western.” John Ford was forced to shop for another production studio, with the happy result being not “just another western,” but indeed the Western of its time.

Sources

Bogdanovich, P. (1978). John Ford (Rev/Enlarged Ed.) Berkely: Univ of Californa Press. Bazin, A. (2004). What is Cinema? Vol. I. (Trans. H. Gray). Berkely: Univ of California Press. McBride, J. (2001). Searching for John Ford: A Life. NY: St. Martin’s Press. Schatz, T. (2003). “Stagecoach and Hollywood’s A-Western Renaissance” in B. K. Grant’s John Ford’s Stagecoach. Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ Press.