By Bruce Dancis
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
(MCT)
When John Ford made "Stagecoach" in 1939, the Hollywood director had already been making movies for two decades and had one Oscar (for 1935's "The Informer") to his credit. Yet he had so little clout in studio-dominated Hollywood that in order to get this Western made, he had to use his own funds to purchase the story on which it is based and then contract with an independent producer, Walter Wanger, to shoot the movie under the auspices of United Artists.
These details about one of the most famous movies from Hollywood's Golden Age come from a variety of sources included in the excellent new DVD of "Stagecoach" released this week by the Criterion Collection (two discs, $39.95 DVD and Blu-ray, not rated).
"Stagecoach" was an immediate hit with both the public and the critics, and quickly reached legendary status. Ford was credited with reviving the Western, which had been relegated to cheap, B-movie status in the 13 years since he directed the silent epic "The Iron Horse"; making a star out of John Wayne, a lowly-regarded actor who had been appearing in low-budget Westerns throughout the 1930s; and introducing filmgoers to Monument Valley, the spectacular landscape in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona Navajo country which Ford made synonymous with the American West. After "Stagecoach," Ford went on to make nearly 50 additional films and win three more Oscars (the most of any director) in an extraordinary career.
As is usually the case with Criterion Collection releases, the visual quality of Ford's work - whether the spectacular exteriors of Monument Valley or the innovative use of lighting and camera angles in the interior shots (cited by Orson Welles as a major influence on his "Citizen Kane") - is enhanced by the DVD's restored, high-definition digital transfer. Equally important are the numerous supplemental features on the DVD.
Foremost is the film's audio commentary by Jim Kitses, writer of the authoritative study of the Hollywood Western, "Horizon's West." Kitses views "Stagecoach" as embodying nothing less than Ford's vision of "the American Dream," the "promise of re-invention and redemption" that immigrants and wanderers could find in the frontier west.
While acknowledging the usual reasons for "Stagecoach's" acclaim, Kitses locates the film's social perspective within the progressive currents of the 1930s, as he and screenwriter Dudley Nichols shared a pro-New Deal outlook. Thus the heroic figures during a stagecoach's perilous ride through hostile Apache country include "society's black sheep and underdogs" - an escaped convict seeking revenge (Wayne's Ringo Kid), a bargirl with a past (Claire Trevor as '30s Hollywood's version of a prostitute) and an alcoholic doctor (Thomas Mitchell) - plus a lawman (George Bancroft) who is both good-hearted and fair-minded.
In contrast are the film's villains: the narrow-minded women of the frontier town who force out the bargirl and the doctor; a snotty wealthy woman (Louise Platt) trying to reach her soldier husband; a mysterious gambler (John Carradine) and a larcenous banker (Berton Churchill) who says things like "What's good for the banks is good for the country" - a line that would have been greeted by audiences in the late '30s much like it would be greeted today. Along for comic relief are the stagecoach driver (Andy Devine) and a travelling whiskey salesman (Donald Meek).
Kitses is a font of information about "Stagecoach," including providing a detailed account of how much each of the major cast members was paid. As an example of his poor status within the ranks of Hollywood actors, Wayne received only $3,700 for his star-making performance - less than any other name actor in the cast except for Carradine.
To his credit, Kitses doesn't shy away from acknowledging the limits of Ford's liberalism in his portrayal of American Indians in "Stagecoach." While Ford's films would later become much more sympathetic to Native Americans, here the Indians, led by the frightful Geronimo, are blood-thirsty but faceless. In an excellent accompanying essay, film scholar David Cairns calls this "the least nuanced portrayal of Indians in any of Ford's classic westerns." To be fair, both Kitses and Cairns also cite Ford's close relationship and financial support for the Navajos who lived near Monument Valley, a point which Ford himself makes, somewhat defensively, in a 1968 television interview with British journalist Philip Jenkinson, also included on the DVD.
In addition to Jenkinson's interview, which shows Ford in all of his legendary cantankerousness, the DVD includes a warm and anecdote-filled reminiscence by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, whose "John Ford," a 1968 book-length interview, remains a singular work of film history.
Other bonus features: "Bucking Broadway," a nearly hour-long silent Western from 1917, one of Ford's earliest movies in which he explored many of the themes (an underdog hero, the centrality of family life) and displayed aspects of the visual style that would become familiar throughout his career; "Dreaming of Jeannie," a video essay by Ford biographer Tag Gallagher on the director's visual style in "Stagecoach"; home movies of John Ford and an interview with his grandson and biographer Dan Ford; "True West," a video interview with writer Buzz Bissinger about a trading post operator named Harry Goulding and his role in stimulating Ford's interest in Monument Valley; a short documentary on acclaimed stuntman Yakima Canutt, whose contributions to "Stagecoach" include some spectacular work during the movie's monumental chase scene, and a 1949 radio dramatization of "Stagecoach" featuring Wayne and Trevor.
Writing about "Stagecoach," the esteemed French critic Andre Bazin said that "John Ford struck the ideal balance between social myth, historical reconstruction, psychological truth and the traditional theme of the western mise en scene (the visual setting of a movie scene) ... 'Stagecoach' is like a wheel, so perfectly made that it remains in equilibrium on its axis in any position."
Check out this outstanding new edition of "Stagecoach" to find out what brought Bazin, Kitses, Bogdanovich, Welles and countless others to such states of rapture about an old Western.
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STAGECOACH
Cast: Claire Trevor, John Wayne, Andy Devine, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell, Louise Platt, George Bancroft, Donald Meek and Berton Churchill
Director: John Ford
Writer: Dudley Nichols (based on a story by Ernest Haycox)
Distributor: Criterion Collection
Not rated