Product Description
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This is where it all started. John Ford's smash hit and enduring
masterpiece Stagecoach revolutionized the western, elevating it
from B movie to the A-list. The quintessential tale of a group of
strangers thrown together into extraordinary
circumstances-traveling a dangerous route from Arizona to New
Mexico-Stagecoach features outstanding performances from
Hollywood stalwarts Claire Trevor, John Carradine, Thomas
Mitchell, and, of course, John Wayne, in his first starring role
for Ford, as the daredevil outlaw the Ringo Kid. Superbly
and tightly edited, Stagecoach (Ford's first trip to Monument
Valley) is Hollywood storytelling at it's finest.
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Stagecoach is the Platonic ideal of what a movie should be and
do, and Criterion's DVD and Blu-ray release showcases its virtues
with love and care. That begins with the digital restoration of a
landmark film most of us have seen only via substandard prints
and videos. Transferred from a 1942 nitrate dupe negative, the
new disc restores director John Ford and cameraman Bert Glennon's
images to their proper richness, clarity, and depth. The results
aren't pristine--dirt and damage remain visible at times,
noticeably during the opening credits--but mostly it's as though
a cloud had lifted with the first break of sun over Monument
Valley. Excellent feature-length audio commentary is supplied by
film scholar Jim Kitses (Horizons West), who right up front
challenges the notion that Stagecoach lacks the nuance and
complexity of later Ford masterworks. He also regrets that the
picture is now known primarily as the vehicle that made John
Wayne an A-list star. It did that (and Kitses means no disrespect
to the Duke!), but more essentially it's a triumph of the
ensemble film, in which every character and performance is
carefully developed and even more artfully d by interplay
with the others. Kitses also fervently contends that the film's
protagonist is not Wayne's Ringo Kid but Dallas, the prostitute
played by Claire Trevor. (Ford told Trevor that her performance
was so good, so fully woven into the texture of the film, she
wouldn't receive the credit she deserved. He was right.)
Two devout Fordians make personal contributions to the Criterion
disk: Peter Bogdanovich with amusing character portraits of Ford
and John Wayne, and Tag Gallagher with a video essay, "Dreaming
of Jeannie." Gallagher sketches Stagecoach's aptness as a
reflection of post-Depression America and then, with acute
sensitivity to the particulars of Ford's style, analyzes key
passages. He illuminates the director's genius for exploring
inner reality through spatial dynamics, and persuasively
demonstrates that "Ford wants us to empathize with people, not to
ally against them … to see without intolerance." Ford himself is
heard from in a 72-minute interview conducted at his home in 1968
by BBC interviewer Philip Jenkinson; this is fascinating, though
less for information and ins imparted than as a chapter in
Ford's career-long history of being cantankerous with
interviewers. His grandson and biographer Dan Ford presents a
quarter-hour of home movies of the director with trusted
colleagues aboard his yacht Araner, a home-away-from-home and
means of escape from Hollywood … yet often Dudley Nichols would
be turning out script pages somewhere on board. Stagecoach made
Monument Valley "John Ford country," so it's right that the set
should include a short history of the Goulding family, who
operated a trading post there, and their relationship with Ford
and the Navajo. There are also a (rather disappointing) tribute
to Yakima Canutt, the fabled stuntman who played such a big part
in executing the movie's famous chase across the salt flats; a
1949 radio dramatization of Stagecoach with Wayne and Trevor
re-creating their roles; a theatrical trailer; and a print essay
by David Cairns.
And yet the most exciting component apart from the Stagecoach
restoration itself is something else by John Ford: a 54-minute
silent comedy-Western from 1917, Bucking Broadway. This was made
the year Ford started directing (at age 23), yet the work is both
fresh with discovery and remarkably assured. Already it has the
look of a Ford picture, as in an early sequence of horsemen
gathering, surging up hillsides, crossing a creek, and then
(anticipating the first of Stagecoach!) breaking into view
from behind a roll of land we didn't even realize was there. The
playing is relaxed, natural; there's hardly anything "silent
movie" about it except that you can't hear their voices. Ford
even kids about sentimentality (something he would often be
charged with in later years) with a scene of crusty cowpokes
getting blubbery over the song "Home Sweet Home." And in the
final reel, as hero Cheyenne Harry (Harry Carey) arrives in New
York City on a mission to rescue his girl, one is sublime:
the off-center framing of the Westerner, with saddle thrown over
his shoulder, striding into the tall, baronial lobby of a
Broadway hotel as concierge and bellhops look warily on.
Picture-man John Ford had arrived, ready for work. --Richard T.
Jameson