Westerns aren't generally my thing; say "space westerns" and I'm there but I associate the genre far too much with the same old story: good guy vs bad guy, innocent dame looks on. Visions of Calamity Jane flash before my eyes. But then it's the same as when I say I don't like musicals, the reality is that I just don't like bad musicals, because there's a good few westerns which I've watched and enjoyed.
Stagecoach, happily, falls into that category. That must partly because Ringo, played by "it must be a Western" John Wayne, is no clean cut hero - he's a wanted criminal, but no less of a hero for it. The others are equally well developed, and I especially admired that the alcoholic Doc Boone, while he stepped up and delivered the baby, didn't undergo a radical Hollywood-schmaltz-induced character shift. It feels truer to reality - bad people can do good things.
The look is fantastic too, with the scenery and wide open spaces. You can really feel the danger the landscape posed to the pioneers, even if the cavalry did tend to arrive at a convenient point.
John Ford, one of the three masters (we all know that the other two are Ford, John and the elusive "JF") is truly a master of the camera, and he builds scenes shot by shot, and then builds the scenes up into a seamless narrative. I thought it flowed very well, from action scenes to more introspective ones.
So, I found Stagecoach to be a pleasant surprise and well worth a watch.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment