Stagecoach (1939)

(On TV, July 2018) It’s absolutely normal to see Stagecoach and feel as if we’ve seen all of this before: While there were a lot of westerns in Hollywood history before Stagecoach, this John Ford film may have been one of the first notable examples of using the Western as a vehicle for drama and social commentary, helmed by a big-name director and starring well-known actors. As a result, Stagecoach ended up being the first of many: First true John Wayne starring role. First Western that earned sustained critical attention. First Western still worth viewing today, if only to establish the classical western formula before the deconstructionists took over. It has the problem of its qualities: being a straight-up well-executed western, it’s unbelievably racist toward Native Americans depicted as savage hordes. Its portrayal of gender roles is, well, what it was. The cavalry comes to the rescue unironically. On the other hand, the device of uniting different characters for a journey in a tightly enclosed space is a classic (allowing for dramatic friction and commentary outside the scope of a typical western) that has withstood the test of time rather well. Wayne isn’t too annoying as the designated hero of the film and it’s easy to see how his persona would become immensely popular as wider audiences were exposed to him through this film. Stagecoach is a classic western and as such today exemplifies them at their conventional rather than transcend the genre like so many other later westerns would do. It’s worth a look, if only as a yardstick against which more subversive westerns would be compared to.