A wildly influential western, one which cemented many of the genre’s best-known tropes and stereotypes and invigorated the careers of two of its most noteworthy players. _Stagecoach_ made an overnight star of John Wayne, who had toiled in light supporting roles for years, and boosted the profile of John Ford, already a well-recognized director with nearly a hundred entries in his filmography. The pair would collaborate on countless films over the ensuing quarter-century, and had known each other for some time prior, but Ford wanted to wait for the right moment to work together. Hindsight is kind to that judgement.

Wayne’s Ringo Kid is no angel (he’s an escaped convict on a mission for revenge), but that’s true of most everyone in this shades-of-gray drama. Stranded in the open Arizona desert, he’s picked up by a horse-drawn carriage that’s already bursting at the seams with personality. Onboard sits a US Marshal - bad news for a fugitive - plus a snobby officer’s wife, a drunken town doctor, a sly and shady gambler, a crotchety old banker and an amiable liquor salesman. In each we see both iniquity and virtue (okay, maybe no virtue from the banker) as the looming threat of an Apache war party grows ever-closer. The Kid finds a kindred spirit in Dallas, a harried prostitute and social pariah, and the two gradually win over the others before their journey’s end.

Despite its age and well-worn conventions, this remains an excellent watch in the modern light. Especially the climactic action scenes, which are startlingly vivid and powerful. Actually, maybe those are a little *too* real. These herds of nose-diving horses weren’t play acting, and the director said he found one particular stunt so nerve-wracking, he wouldn’t try it again, even if the first take hadn’t worked out.

We're the victims of a foul disease called social prejudice, my child.

Stagecoach is directed by John Ford and adapted by Dudley Nichols from a story by Ernest Haycox. It stars Claire Trevor, John Wayne, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell, Andy Devine, Donald Meek and Louise Platt. Director of photography is Bert Glennon and director of music Boris Morros.

6 people on board a stagecoach bound for Lordsburg, each one very different in character, each one with their own issues in life, and some carrying shame as well as dark secrets. The journey is fraught with danger as the Apache are tracking them thru the desert flats, can all the polar opposites come together to form a united front?

It's now written in history that the 1930s was a bad decade for the Western movie. The decade began with expensive flops The Big Trail & Cimarron and from there the big studios pretty much condemned the genre to being nothing more than a B movie production line. Then in 1937 a story called Stage to Lordsburg was published in Collier's magazine, a story written by Ernest Haycox that itself was inspired by a short story called Boule de Suif written by Guy de Maupassant. John Ford liked the story very much and purchased the rights, trusting Dudley Nichols to rework a screenplay into a classic Western narrative. Meeting resistance from some of the head men at the studios, Ford had to fight hard to not only get the film made, but to also have John Wayne playing The Ringo Kid. Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea were wanted instead of Wayne, and Marlene Dietrich was suggested for the role of Dallas, the role eventually went to Claire Trevor. But Ford stuck to his guns, and rightly so, for now Stagecoach can be seen as a wonderful film that not only launched Wayne to stardom, but also as the film that reignited the Western genre and paved the way for some essential classics that followed.

John Ford's first sound Western is rich with character dynamics at play, with the great director exploring what would become a trademark theme of his, that of moral qualities born out of people deemed less pure in society's eyes. True enough Stagecoach is still very traditional in an early Western movie sense, but the study of different characters under duress is magnificently moulded by director and cast alike. It was something that Orson Welles liked about the film, calling it perfect textbook film making, even claiming it to be a film he watched numerous times whilst crafting Citizen Kane. It's easy to believe Welles, we obviously remember the stunning Apache pursuit of the rocketing stagecoach, the stunt work, the breathless energy and the majestic location of Monument Valley, but thematically the film sizzles as well. That Ford is able to marry sharp action with real human drama - intimate drama played out on a massive panoramic landscape - is why Stagecoach continually entertains and influences with each passing year.

From the moment Ford zooms up close on the face of John Wayne, a mega-star was born, but more importantly, from the opening credits to the last second of Stagecoach, the Western movie was reborn. A near masterpiece of the genre. 9/10