John Ford’s classic 1939 Western (and the his first “sound” Western) gave John Wayne stardom. It’s also an excellent psychological film. A single stagecoach is crossing through hostile Apache country. It could be attacked at any moment. Aboard this stage are such a cast of characters: the ornery driver, a lawman, a soldier’s wife, a gambler, a drunk doctor, a whiskey salesman (who, oddly, keeps getting mistaken for a preacher - there’s no God out here to save you!), a thieving banker, a prostitute, and a criminal. Each has a past, each their prejudices, each their different goals and intents. It’s almost like an Albee play in a way.
And Ford films it wonderfully. Every interior - an outpost, a saloon, a house - has a ceiling, a rarity for studio sets in the 30s. Ford wanted those moments to be claustrophobic, tight. And ironically so, for it’s in those places where our characters are the safest. The stagecoach itself, in the middle of the huge Monument Valley (Ford loved shooting here, and continued here for many more films), is their dangerous prison. It’s the open country that’s deadly.
