For some reason, 1939 has been proclaimed "Hollywood's greatest year". I doubt that, but the year IS important if only because John Ford released his mythic *Stagecoach* in the midst of the surrounding Technicolor sap 'n' pap (*Gone With the Wind*, *Wizard of Oz*, etc.). In fact, *Stagecoach* firmly gets my vote for the best Western John Ford ever made. Unlike the current critics' darling, *The Searchers*, this movie doesn't depend solely on John Wayne to save it from self-parody and/or pretension. In 1939, Monument Valley wasn't a cliche, yet. (As it was by 1956, when *The Searchers* came out.) The whore-with-the-heart-of-gold, the Southern-gentleman-who-is-handy-with-a-gun, the overeducated-drunk-who-can-be-counted-on-in-a-pinch, and naturally the honorable-gunslinger weren't cinematic cliches yet, either. For that matter, John Wayne wasn't a cliche, yet. Therefore, if you can forget the 6 or 7 decades of baggage that trailed after this movie, baggage that has turned up not just in Westerns but in other genres such as film noir and romantic comedies and "disaster epics", then the freshness of *Stagecoach* becomes readily apparent.
Oddly enough, the movie seems at first to be a cowboy spoof of *Grand Hotel* in the manner in which it throws together its 7 archetypal characters into the stagecoach for the long journey to Lordsburg. But soon enough Ford creates his own archetypes, like John Wayne emerging from the desert, alone, carrying his saddle like some epic hero. And there's the magnificent setting itself, empty and unforgiving and beautiful. Unfortunately, Ford would come to rely on Monument Valley to convey "significance", but here it seems at once incidental and yet integral to the plot. *Stagecoach* ultimately comes to feel like the birthing of our great mythos, both of our understanding of our nation's expansion and of the importance of our 20th-century entertainers. Even the characters' names have been burned into our consciousness (Ringo Kid, Stella Dallas, Doc Boone). And this is the movie that made John Wayne the indispensable American hero, a role he easily carried for 4 decades.
Above and beyond all this, the movie also features one of the all-time great chases in cinema: the breakneck race across the salt-flats, with Wayne expertly wielding his shotgun, keeping Geronimo's hordes from getting too close. Watch for some death-defying stunt-work as Wayne's character leaps from harness-to-harness along the team-of-eight . . . then consider how cheaply it would be done today, with computer imaging and choppy editing. Ford delivered action the old-fashioned way: he made his stunt-players EARN it, keeping an unblinking camera on them the whole way. Superb.
