Every Friday Chris hand-selects a streaming recommendation for your weekend.
This Week’s Featured Flick
Stagecoach on Hulu
THE TRAILER
THE DETAILS
DIRECTOR: John Ford
WRITER: Dudley Nichols
CAST: Claire Trevor, John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Andy Devine, John Carradine, George Bancroft, Louise Platt, Donald Meek, Berton Churchill
GENRE: Western
RUNTIME: 96 min
YEAR: 1939
THE PLOT (via Letterboxd)
A simple stagecoach trip is complicated by the fact that Geronimo is on the warpath in the area. The passengers on the coach include a a drunken doctor, two women, a bank manager who has taken off with his client’s money, and the famous Ringo Kid, among others.
THE REASON
While promoting Django Unchained a few years ago Quentin Tarantino bluntly stated his disdain for Stagecoach’s director John Ford.
But damn it’s hard to sit through any of the trailers for Hateful Eight without seeing the glaring similarities to Ford’s 1939 film.
The story of Stagecoach is about as simple as they come. Nine archetypal strangers traverse treacherous territory in the titular wagon. Their reasons for embarking on the journey all differ, but each is looking to escape the past. The long journey affords the passengers no choice but to become aquatinted with one another.
QT’s Bounty Hunter, Hangman, Cow Puncher, etc. characters may be a bit darker and more nefarious than Ford’s company, and I’m sure there’s more to the story of these eight strangers than the trailers reveal, but the resemblance in their rudimentary structures is undeniable. This creates a perfect opportunity to catch up on a classic film that – willingly or not – Tarantino seems to be paying homage to.
Stagecoach reinvented the Western genre and elevated the cachet of its pictures, transforming them from from b-movies into featured attractions. It also introduced the world to John Wayne’s strong silent cowboy. And while the film is certainly worth seeing for this historical context alone, don’t start thinking that’s all it has to offer. Stagecoach is a masterful marriage of simple, economic storytelling and Ford’s trademark Monument Valley vistas that (even in 4:3 black and white) leap from the screen. Watch it now on Hulu.
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