STAGECOACH

*******Your responses must be substantial, not simply
evaluative. They must employ some course-related connection that involves
stylistic, thematic, and technical considerations. Blurbs, review-like absurdities, and/or tangential gobbledygook
will garner commensurate grades. You are not blogging. You are students showing
film literacy and scholarship. Adhere to the conventions of standard written English. Consider
them weekly mini essays. Familiarize yourself ASAP with
the Instructions for All Essays section of this syllabus.******

STAGECOACH (1939) 96m
Anecdotal Introductory Notes:
-Asked which directors he most admired, Orson Welles replied “the old masters: John Ford, John Ford and John Ford.” (He screened STAGECOACH 39 times prior to CITIZEN KANE!!)
-First of seven films Ford shot in his favorite location, Monument Valley, on the Arizona/Utah border, a Navajo Nation Reservation. The Navajo called Ford “Tall Soldier” and named one particular vista point there “John Ford Point.” (Our Blackboard course image is of said Point.)
-Andre Bazin called STAGECOACH “the ultimate classical Western, perfectly balanced -like a wheel.”
-Lyndsay Anderson (IF, OH LUCKY MAN) called it “Ford’s rediscovery of America, with the great populist quartet of STAGECOACH, YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK and THE GRAPES OF WRATH all finished within a year” !!!! (And all available in our Course Documents BB section)
NARRATIVE THEMATICS:
– Classes clashing: Ensemble cast of the privileged and the outcasts. Ford, as first generation Irish-American, knew from whence he spoke. (“No Irish need apply!”)
-The American Dream/Manifest Destiny:
-Reinvention and Redemption
-The black sheep hero
-Familial considerations: Each character’s familial background and connections or the lack thereof and how it shapes each’s standing and destiny. (Dallas, Doc, Mallory, Ringo, Hatfield and Buck) Jim Kitses calls family a “structuring absence.”
-Revisiting and creating cliches
Although the Apaches, the Vaqueros, Gatewood and Plummer are villains of this piece, the real villain seems social prejudice, with overcoming it the real heroic action of the film and certain of its characters, with Dallas as the center of gravity in this regard, not Ringo’s revenge arc or fending off an Apache attack.
-Race and ethnicity issues? Yakima and the Apache? Smiley and Mexicans?
A question of Ford’s depersonalization of the Apache into a mythic force (as was the case in all of Hollywood…) But, with Ford’s maturation, this would change dramatically
STYLISTICS:
-Two-shots and glances galore as duos abound
Multiple pairings of characters (Dallas & Doc; Doc & Peacock; Curley & Buck; Mallory & Hatfield, etc.)
Male and female gazes shared, particularly Dallas & Mallory; Dallas & Ringo; Mallory & Hatfield, etc.)
-Ford’s famous frames-within-a-frame compositions
Dallas’s walk down the hallway as Ringo watches
Coach arrival at Apache Wells
-His overall compositions, particularly exteriors of Monument Valley, but also interiors (all seated at dining table with outcasts separated from the privileged / barrooms)
-Low angled shots revealing ceilings over characters (Something Welles was most definitely influenced by in the 39 screenings he’d had of STAGECOACH before filming CITIZEN KANE.
-The treatment of Dallas and Doc delivering and tending to Lil Coyote…immaculate conception via the editing?
Miscellaneous gems in shots and dialogue
-Iconic Ford shots that open the film: Horses approaching, a bugler, the American flag being raised
-The fork in the road when the cavalry and coach go their separate ways.
-When Dallas is braiding Mallory’s hair, Mallory “looks down” at Dallas even while looking up at her (!!)
-Luke’s ‘dead man’s hand of aces and eights in Lordsburg.
-“Saved from the blessings of civilization.”
-Dallas: “There are worse things than Apaches,” (Sam Peckinpah would later have a field day with this notion with his treatment of temperance groups, reverends and leering ladies.)

INSTRUCTIONS FOR ALL ESSAYS:
*MAKE CERTAIN TO SIGNIFICANTLY CITE SOURCES, with extra credit
consideration a distinct probability for citations from significant
other readings. Lack of, or scant
citations, will result in a far poorer grade, regardless of your writing
proficiency.
Include a cover sheet
containing an essay title, your name, course number and date.
Number your pages (bottom
center preferred).
Make certain to
avoid the following pitfalls:
1.
Do not write plot summaries. (Elements of the story or the plot of a film
should be used as specifically brief details to explain or discuss the ideas of
the film, and its relation/significance to our course topics.)
2.
Avoid vague and
unnecessary evaluative terms like “beautiful photography,” “superb acting,” or
“tight direction.”
3.
Always support general arguments with specific film examples
described as accurately as possible.
4.
Use the characters’ names–not
the actors’–when discussing the film but give the actor’s name in parentheses
on first use.
5.
Underline or italicize film titles. Do not place them “in quotes.”
6.
DO NOT indulge in loose and careless use of terms like symbolism or
foreshadowing; indeed, you would probably be better off avoiding them
altogether. So too, DO NOT use the phrases “throughout the film…” or “…gives
the feeling of…,” for they invariably get absurdly repetitive. Do not refer to the viewer or audience
or use expressions like “we see” or “you hear” as these also
become woefully, nauseatingly repetitious.
7.
Do not describe
the film using first person (I/we) or second person (you) pronouns. Comments like “we see Baby and Johnny
together for the first time . . .” would be better written as “Baby and Johnny
are together for the first time . . ..”
8.
Do not mix your
tenses and always keep your verbiage in the present tense! (i.e., “The character IS /
DOES / HAS” rather than was, did and had.)
9.
Properly,
indeed meticulously, PROOF & EDIT
your work before submitting. Grades drop
precipitously with each instance of poorly proofed errors.

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