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Stagecoach (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

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Stagecoach (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] Overviews

This is where it all started. John Ford’s smash hit and enduring masterpiece emStagecoach /emrevolutionized 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–emStagecoach /emfeatures 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 shot and tightly edited, emStagecoach /em(Ford’s first trip to Monument Valley) is Hollywood storytelling at its finest.

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Stagecoach (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] CustomerReview

Now don’t get me wrong here. This is one of the greatest American movies and that’s why it gets five stars from me. If cowboy movies have a Citizen Kane, this is it. And yet at the same time it’s a deeply surversive essay on the immorality of the wide-open American frontier that systematically questions every single civilized value that you can think of. Let’s not beat around the bush, okay? Basically we’re looking at the love story of a jailbird and a whore, which is the exact opposite of the conventional Western. This is the DECONSTRUCTION of the Western genre, a deliberate attempt to demolish the grand narratives of Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy. This is a post-modernist film that improbably emerged 50 years before post-modernisn came into fashion, very Nietzchean in its devaluation of all values. br /br /THE OPENING: The wives of a western town are kicking out the town whore. And why not? If you were one of those wives, would you want your husbands associating with a prostitute? Recall that there was no cure for syphilis in those days. And even worse, the wives are presented as ugly and clownish. Is this really fair to them? Funny on the surface, but nasty underneath.br /THE RINGO KID: Yeah, such a great entrance! But he just busted out of prison, and he’s not even old enough to vote. Okay, he has this big windy story about how he was unfairly locked up, but is he a reliable narrator? Can we believe him? Or is he just a murderous delinquent?br /THE BANKER: A fat, greedy fool with a monster wife. One day he just grabs the bank’s money and skedaddles out of town. This character is thinner than cardboard, no motivations except for childish greed and stupidity.br /THE DOCTOR: May the good Lord help you if you get sick and need medical help from this pathetic substance abuser. He’s always drunk, except when he’s delivering a baby. And then quite suddenly he becomes Sir Lancelot, the protector of innocent womanhood and the shining image of chivalry. Fun to watch, but I don’t believe it. br /THE SOUTHERNER: Obviously John Carradine fought on the wrong side in the Civil War. In other words, he risked his life to defend the disgusting abomination of human slavery. And yet he’s the most polished gentleman in the movie. In fact, the only real gentleman. Kind of like the good Nazi, right?br /THE CAVALRY OFFICER: As head of a troop of horse soldiers, responsible for maintaining order in a brutal land. And yet he’s presented as a green kid, shy and stammering, almost helpless. One more authority figure torn down and disrespected.br /THE WHISKEY SALESMAN: Totally and improbably helpless! Such a nebbish would be eaten alive in the old West. br /THE STAGECOACH DRIVER: An obese figure of low comedy, a babbling big-bellied clown. And yet this engaging stupidity has to be a phony act, because such a fool wouldn’t have lasted six months on the frontier. Not to be trusted. Probably cheats at cards.br /THE INDIANS (pardon me, the NATIVE AMERICANS): Of course they attack the stagecoach, but this has to be the most incompetent Indian attack ever staged. If you really want to stop a stagecoach, you just shoot the horses. Bang bang bang and it’s all over. But instead our Native American friends ride patiently alongside the stagecoach and wait to be blasted off their ponies, one by one. Hey, it’s my turn to get killed now! And finally, with a great noise of bugles, the cavalry JUST HAPPENS to ride up. In a million square miles of wilderness, the horse soldiers are by some unexplained accident in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Yeah, okay, and I have a very nice bridge I’d like to sell you.br /br /The real ending of the story is terribly pathetic. The jailbird and the whore are sent off into the sunset, apparently on their way to a little ranch in Mexico that the Ringo Kid improbably owns. So what the heck are they going to do in Mexico in the midst of a hostile population that hates anglos? I’ll tell you the real ending. A year later the Ringo Kid lies fatally wounded in their adobe hut, shot by bandits who just stole all their cattle. And the prostitute is packing up to move to a whorehouse in Tampico where she can at least get a hot bath. That’s the real ending to the story and don’t you doubt it.br /br /This movie is a brilliant end run around the Hollywood code and the Hays office. And yet maybe John Ford tried a little too hard to make fun of the ordinary people, the plain little folks like you and me who make the world run. H.L. Mencken used to preach that everybody was a boob except for himself. John Ford seems to be telling this exact same story, and that’s why I think there’s a bad smell hovering over this brilliant film. br /

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