{"id":14743,"date":"2012-03-23T11:32:33","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T11:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=14743"},"modified":"2012-03-23T11:34:35","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T11:34:35","slug":"film-notes-2-stagecoach-1939","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2012\/03\/23\/film-notes-2-stagecoach-1939\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Notes #2: Stagecoach (1939)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Stagecoach.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14744\" title=\"Stagecoach\" src=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Stagecoach.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"280\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The 30-day film watching experiment continues with John Ford&#8217;s classic 1939 western.<\/p>\n<p>For newcomers, the deal is that I must watch a film every day and make notes about it, with the following rules:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>I\u2019ve already seen it<\/li>\n<li>I must make notes\u00a0<em>whilst<\/em>\u00a0I\u2019m watching it.<\/li>\n<li>Pauses are allowed but the viewing must all be one session.<\/li>\n<li>It can\u2019t be a cinema release.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The point is to capture my instant thoughts about a movie and my overall film diet for 30 days, as well as post interesting links to the film in question.<\/p>\n<p>Here are my notes on <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0031971\/\">Stagecoach<\/a><\/b> (1939) which I watched on a DVD on Tuesday 13th March.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>John Ford&#8217;s first sound western.<\/li>\n<li>Apparently Orson Welles watched this 40 times whilst making CITIZEN KANE (1941).<\/li>\n<li>Nominated for Best Picture in 1939.<\/li>\n<li>Motley crew of people get on a stagecoach and journey across Apache territory.<\/li>\n<li>Typical Ford use of real locations, especially Monument Valley.<\/li>\n<li>Costumes are fantastic.<\/li>\n<li>Acting a little (ahem) &#8220;of its time&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>John Wayne looks so young &#8211; our popular image of him is as an older man.<\/li>\n<li>Banking commentary at 33 mins! (Occupy Wall Street by way of Monument Valley&#8230; )<\/li>\n<li>The pompous banker is played by Henry Gatewood and the screenplay has the foresight to include the detail that he&#8217;s just embezzled some some assets.<\/li>\n<li>Interesting camera positioning within a confined space &#8211; compare to THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS (1974) and CHILDREN OF MEN (2006).<\/li>\n<li>Ford must have planned out his shots carefully.<\/li>\n<li>According to Steven Spielberg, Ford never shot coverage, so the studio couldn&#8217;t edit in their preferred takes.<\/li>\n<li>At one point (47 mins) a character actually says the words: &#8220;well I&#8217;ll be dog gone&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Cast actually blend well together, newcomers to the film might be surprised it&#8217;s not an all Wayne affair.<\/li>\n<li>Claire Trevor, John Carradine and Thomas Mitchell all excellent.<\/li>\n<li>Claire Trevor&#8217;s character is a prostitute so notorious that local women have conspired to oust her from the town.<\/li>\n<li>Quite a bit of smoking goes on e.g. Curley lighting his cigarette from the lamp and the Doc smoking his cigar.<\/li>\n<li>Racial attitudes are more interesting than expected.<\/li>\n<li>Although the Apaches are hostile, there is one scene in the Mexican fort which suggests racial tolerance where they talk of the wife&#8217;s Apache people.<\/li>\n<li>The idea of an anti-hero prisoner on board may have influenced ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976) and other films.<\/li>\n<li>Climactic chase is actually exciting!<\/li>\n<li>Replace the horses with helicopters and the chase is reminiscent of the helicopter attack on the village in APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)<\/li>\n<li>Did RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) reference the Apache sliding under the coach in the scene where Indy slides beneath the truck?<\/li>\n<li>The climax of MAD MAX 2 (1981) was also possibly influenced by this chase.<\/li>\n<li>Blending of rear projection and location shooting is actually pretty good.<\/li>\n<li>Foley of water splashing in the Doc&#8217;s face is one of the more notable sound effects.<\/li>\n<li>The cavalry charge is signified by the bugle, an important sound effect that is blended in with the score.<\/li>\n<li>Interesting that the Wayne character is a prisoner &#8211; somewhat against type.<\/li>\n<li>Denouement sequence interesting as we see a criminal propose marriage to a prostitute. So much for 1930s morality!<\/li>\n<li>Misleading &#8216;switch&#8217; in who got shot in the final scene reminiscent of the climax of MINORITY REPORT (2002).<\/li>\n<li>Closing dialogue (&#8220;Doc, I&#8217;ll buy you a drink&#8221;) is a bit like CASABLANCA (1942).<\/li>\n<li>Claire Trevor is billed above John Wayne in the end credits.<\/li>\n<li>Holds up very well as a classic Western.<\/li>\n<li>I definitely need to get the Criterion Blu-ray of this &#8211; it has a load of interesting extras.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><script src=\"http:\/\/storify.com\/filmdetail\/film-notes-2-stagecoach-1939.js\"><\/script><noscript>[<a href=\"http:\/\/storify.com\/filmdetail\/film-notes-2-stagecoach-1939\" target=\"_blank\">View the story &#8220;Film Notes #2: Stagecoach (1939)&#8221; on Storify<\/a>]<\/noscript><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 30-day film watching experiment continues with John Ford&#8217;s classic 1939 western.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2487],"tags":[1507,2493],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14743"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}