Today's edition of Dave-El's Weekend Movie Post is about a western film that was released 86 years ago on March 3, 1939. Directed by John Ford and featuring a breakthrough performance by a young John Wayne.
The movie is Stagecoach so lets clamber into that dark sweaty hot box on wheels as it crosses the great plains of the American west.
The time: June 1880.
The place: the town of Tonto in the Arizona Territory.
A group of strangers have gathered to board the stage to Lorfdsburg, New Mexico.
- Dallas, a prostitute driven out of town by the "Law and Order League"
- the alcoholic Doc Boone (the League has no use for him either)
- pregnant Lucy Mallory, who is travelling to join her cavalry officer husband (the League has no probem with her since she was impregnated by legally sanctioned heteronormative sexual intercourse. But a woman "with child" travelling alone? Really!)
- courtly southern gentleman Hatfield who offers is services to guide Mrs. Mallory on her treacherous journey (and stay just ahead of the Tonto's "Law & Order League" who have little use for gamblers)
- whiskey salesman Samuel Peacock (gee I wonder how the ladies of L&O League feel about him?)
- Henry Gatewood, a banker (who the ladies of the League would regard as an upstanding member of the community who is on the stage as this "law abiding gentleman" is absconding with a crap ton of embezzled money.)
Buck, the stage driver is joined by Marshal Curley Wilcox who's keeping an eye out for the Ringo Kid who has broken out of prison after hearing that his father and brother were murdered by Luke Plummer in Lordsburg. Curley is friends with Ringo and hopes to catch up to him before he does something stupid or dangerous or both.
The calvary informs the travellers that Geronimo and his Apaches are on the warpath and troops will provide escort and protection as far as they can to Dry Fork.
And the crowded stagecoach is off.
It's nearly summer in the American southwest in a cramped conveyance filled with people dressed in heavy cotton/wool blends. And stagecoaches are not that big. Maybe 2 or 3 adults would find it tolerable.
This vehicle is filled with six people.
Make that seven.
They encounter the Ringo Kid along the way and even though Curley and Ringo are friends, Curley takes Ringo into custody and crowds him into the coach.
I'm gonna guess it's been awhile since Ringo's had a bath.
So now we've got all that going on.
Suffice to say that everything that can go wrong goes wrong.
The calvary is not around as much as this travelling gang would hope.
Geronimo and his warriors give chase to the stagecoach.
Lucy goes into labor ahead of schedule (of course) which means drunken Doc Boone needs to sober up quick to deliver the baby and good thing Dallas is there to help.
On one hand, Stagecoach is a basic western trope of people trying to make it across a hostile frontier from point A to point B.
But this movie transends that basic premise. Philosopher Robert B. Pippin noted the characters in this file "are archetypal rather than merely individual and....the film is a mythic representation of the American aspiration toward a form of politically meaningful equality."
In other words, this means more than just shoving a half dozen people into a hot sweaty box on wheels and sending it off across a territory that threatens danger and death.
We've got ourselves a microcosm of good fashioned American classism. In the tight convines of the stagecoach, there are efforts to isolate Dallas from Lucy yet it's Dallas who comes through when Lucy goes into labor.
Ringo is the first person to treat Dallas with respect because all he sees is a woman, not the labels put upon her by society. He is respectful to Dallas and Lucy equally.
Nothing like being forced to rely on one another to survive to erode away at societal bigotry.
In 1995, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry.
Like most Westerns of the era, the depiction of Native Americans in Stagecoach as simplistic savages has not age well.
Stagecoach was the first of many Westerns that director John Ford shot in Monument Valley, on the Arizona–Utah border. It makes for some awesome scenery but is nowhere near New Mexico.
I first saw Stagecoach in college back in the early 1980's as part of film course on the works of John Ford and most recently rewatched it a few months back. As noted above, some elements have not aged well but for the most part, this movie remains a well made film rising above the basic tropes of a mere western to remain an engaging character study.
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