La Chevauchée fantastique

A stagecoach sets out across the desert with a load of passengers, looking to catch up with a military unit and drop off the wife of the officer in charge. All the other passengers have their own reasons for getting to the destination, including a vengeful outlaw, a prostitute, a drunken doctor and a cad. However the journey is made incredibly hazardous by the fact that Geronimo is on the warpath in the area they must pass through.

Although I miss seeing the desert landscape in full yellows and blues, this film is one of my favourite westerns and only suffers a little by being in black & while and not really enjoying the visual sweep that later Ford westerns had. The plot is quite simple on one hand - a group battle Indians on their way to a town while some of the characters confront their own battles. However this succeeds because it is more than just a B-movie shoot'em up, it has characters and sub plot.

The characters may be quite broad and the film may well use them like a disaster movie (set them up just enough to care about and then see who gets knocked down) but it does have touches that improve it. Characters are shunned due to their social status, `good' people are revealed to be not so good as they think themselves while `bad' people reveal themselves to have good hearts and the potential for redemption in their lives. While it isn't earth shattering it is well crafted and well written in the context of the traditional western.

Wayne is good and this film allowed him to step up from B-movie westerns to the type of films that made his career. The rest of the cast are also good in their various roles, while the characters are broad they all play it well, especially Trevor, Devine, Mitchell and Carradine.

Overall this is a solid western that has good action (include a great stunt that was lifted directly into Raiders of the Lost Ark) but also has characters and interactions which make for a polished and enjoyable movie.

Saw this in the 90s on a vhs. Revisited it recently on a bluray. It is an awesome entertaining film with beautiful scenery n amazing action sequences. The long shots captured the landscapes well, the characters r all very memorable n the tension is maintained throughout, the action scenes were top notch, especially the stagecoach running in the middle of the vast wide open space n pursued by the Indians. Wayne shooting his guns from the top n he controlling the horses were amazing action sequences. This movie did two great things. Wayne became a major movie star n western movies upgraded to A grade. It is also the first western shot in the beautiful Monument Valley. The movie is about a group of passengers who r travelling in a stagecoach. The passengers are given the alarming news that Geronimo is on the warpath and that their lives are in danger but each of the passenges has their own reasons for taking the risk. When the Marshall is informed that an outlaw is present in the destination town, he joins the stagecoach which is filled with a driver whos got a unique voice, a prostitute who has just been forced out of the previous town, a drunken doctor, a pregnant woman, a gambler, a liquor salesman and a crooked banker. Wayne gets a solid entrance after we have heard about him multiple times from other characters. Ringo Kid (Wayne) joins the stagecoach cos his horse has gone lame. He has to surrender his gun to the Marshall n will be arrested once they reach the destined town but our Ringo kid has to settle score with a trio of outlaws who killed his father n brother.

The Overland Stage Lines stagecoach is traveling from the frontier town of Tonto, Arizona to Lordsburg, New Mexico. Geronimo, the Apache chief, has just jumped the reservation and starts an uprising. Before leaving Tonto, the passengers are notified by the Calvary that they are now traveling at their own considerable risk but they will be escorted by the soldiers (here's a clue: don't believe it). Among the passengers are a prostitute being thrown out of town by a group of women with their noses so stuck up in the air you could fly flags off of them. She is joined by a drunken doctor, a gentlemen card shark, a meek whiskey salesman, a crooked banker, a pregnant woman on her way to meet her husband, and a young cowboy who just broke out of jail and out to revenge his family's murder. The coach driver and his shotgun complete the group.

It's all based on a short story called appropriately Stage to Lordsburg but also on a French story (Guy de Maupassant's Boule de Suif) with similar characters traveling in a coach during the Franco-Prussian War.

The basic structure of the plot is also familiar to fans of disaster films. Passengers are introduced, board a common conveyance and face a tremendous danger. The exciting adventure of who lives, who dies, will the stage make it to its destination, and what happens next is highlighted by perhaps the most famous stunts in film history by the most famous and respected stuntman of all Yakima Canutt. If one of the stunts looks familiar, Steven Speilberg recreated it for his first Indiana Jones film.

The film is also a lot more. Unlike other westerns up to its time which were mainly shoot-em-ups between the good guys in the white hats and the bad guys in the black hats, it examines very serious social issues and how different people look down at others differently. Besides prejudice, some of the characters are flawed with alcoholism, greed and revenge. We also see the good in bad people with respect for new life and ultimately redemption. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Interior Decoration, Best Film Editing, Best Supporting Actor (won) and Best Score (won), Stagecoach was John Ford's first sound Western and elevated the genre in both critical praise and popularity. The low camera angles in Monument Valley would become a John Ford trademark. Despite doing 70 films, this is the one that made Wayne a star and it's easy to see why. Many consider it his best performance; both subtle and clear he cares for the needs of the people around him and yearns for his own need for a home, a wife and a family. It is considered one of the great films in cinemas greatest year, 1939. Gone With the Wind, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Dark Victory, The Wizard of Oz, Of Mice and Men and Ninotchka were all nominated for best picture alongside Stagecoach that year.

Regarding the political incorrectness of an Apache uprising, well, they happened. If you just happened to be in a stagecoach in the middle of the southwest during an Apache uprising chances are you would be killed. This story does not examine the reasons for the uprising only the effects on a group of travelers trying to travel through it.

Stagecoach is not your normal, run of the mill, western. It will have you on the edge of your seat as passengers make their way through some dangerous Indian country. By the time the film ends, you will know all of the characters very well and ,for the most part,care whether they live or die.John Ford's excellent directing, great performances from John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Andy Devine and, especially, Thomas Mitchell who won an Acadamy Award for his portrayal of a drunken doctor aboard the stage. Add a great score, super stunt work, and filming done at Monument Valley (Arizona /Utah border) and you have a complete motion picture. I highly recommend "Stagecoach".

I first saw Stagecoach the year it was released 1939, when I was nine years old. I saw it again the other afternoon as a rerun on tv. Despite that technically it is showing it's age, afterall it is 63 years old, and all of it's players are no longer with us, it is still one of the greatest westerns to ever grace a cinema screen. The indian attack, the cavalry to the rescue, the drunken doctor, the bar room floozie with a heart of gold, the gambler, and the hero doing "what a man's got to do" and escaping without a scratch . All the ingredients and more of a classic western but done superbly. Not a scene overplayed, not a (film) shot wasted.