Stagecoach... coast to coast

I've been meaning to watch Stagecoach for some time now, seeing as it is number 63 of AFI's 100 greatest films and one of 12 films the Vatican has labeled as art. Many have told me that this film contained one of John Wayne's better performances and, more than that, the best direction by John Ford. With that said I had very high expectations and, after the sowing, the film fell a little short all thanks to John Wayne.

I have never been a huge John Wayne fan. He reminds me of a western style Steven Segal, who I feel is more of a joke than an actor. Wayne's acting consistently falls flat with his emotions seeming nonexistent rather than intense or sorrowful. Take for instance his first appearance in the coach. Doc asks him "What became of the boy whose arm I fixed" to which Ringo (Wayne) replies "He was murdered." The scene then goes on to display each character in the coach looking down in a state of sorrow and then the camera move to Wayne who shows no sense of remorse or sadness but instead looks vacantly toward the floor as if searching for a quarter. If any have seen the movie Righteous Kill in recent months, John Leguizamo puts on the same performance in a bar scene with Al Pacino and Donnie Wahlburg. Each character should be in a state of empathy and Pacino, in his greatness, and Wahlburg, an actor I respect after his performances in the Band of Brothers mini-series, do so effortlessly but Leguizamo looks downright confused. That best illustrates how Wayne preformed throughout the whole movie; confused. Even when he is displaying his love and admiration to Dallas he just seems to speak the same way he spoke about the Plummer Brothers, which should be the exact opposite.

As far as the supporting cast, I felt their performances were what they needed to be and the characters themselves were nothing short of amazing. In the western genre there are usually 3 characters: an actor who has a comedic performance, a damsel in distress, and a gentleman. Those three characters are usually needed to make a western great (the exception is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly which lacked a lead female role). Stagecoach takes that idea one step further and splits those three roles into six different characters with Doc and Curley being the comedians, Lucy and, to a lesser extent, Dallas as the damsels in distress, and Hatfield and Curley being the gentlemen. What makes Wayne's supporting cast really come alive is how these stereotypical characters are laced with social prejudice transform and "show their true colors." Dallas is a lady of "ill repute", Hatfield is a southern gambler, Dr. Boone is a drunkard, and the Ringo Kid (Wayne) is an outlaw. They lose their stereotypical titles and are looked down upon by the nobler, civilized people such as Lucy. As the characters progress with their journey they lose their titles and enter into a "state of nature" where morality and social standing is nullified. And through great plot devices we find that, by the end of the movie, those who are seen as "lower class" have saved the lives of the upper class and become "heroes".

* Returning to John Wayne for a moment; did anyone else feel that Han Solo vibe from Ringo the Kid? The similarities seem uncanny; both the Rouge outlaws with bounties on their heads, both with hearts of gold, both save the "fair maidens," both godly with a gun, both strikingly handsome. I couldn't help but point that out*

I am not a directing aficionado and know almost nothing about camera angles and such, but I have watched some of the great modern directors (Jackson, Spielberg, Scorsese, Ford Coppola, Eastwood, Tarantino, and Cameron to name a few) and its fairly obvious that Ford was of great influence to them. The scenes of wide shots of monument valley with the contrasting small stagecoach are almost poetic. It is eerie how similar this movie is shot in comparison to Cameron's Titanic where we are presented with the almost closet like living quarters of the Irish immigrants as compared to the ominous Atlantic ocean the ship is voyaging on. Without the progressive and talented directing skills of Ford, I don't think that many of the subtle nuisances of film we take for granted would exist.

Closing Statement:

In the end I give Stagecoach a 9.0 out of 10.0, the deduction coming from Wayne's dry and flat performance. It must noted that this film should be seen by all in order to appreciate the work of film makers today. An article by Matthew Bernstein claims that Orson Wells watched this movie "forty times in preparation for Citizen Kane," a film considered by the American Film Institute as the greatest movie of all time. With that being said, this movie must be seen by any film lover.