Stagecoach
I finished a proof and am secretly proud of myself. (The advisor™ did not seem to think so, at least he didn’t say explicitly it was good.) Normally, when I finish something, the first thing I do is to watch a film. Which one should it be today, I wonder?
Two days ago, I spent a day with one of my professors from 2 years ago, and of course I talked about movies most of the time. Since everybody watches them, I tried to find out what he has seen. It turns out he grew up with all these movies that are considered classics today, including western and some spaghetti western. We had some minor overlap, mostly war movies (Jarhead! Letters from Iwo Jima!) but most of the times he saw movies I have never even heard of. The only film he mentioned that I knew of was “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, everything was just completely obscure to me. I didn’t even know ménage à trois French movies he saw. It was probably the strangest conversation of film I have ever had. I am also too forgetful to remember any of the titles he mentioned, but it probably wouldn’t have been my type of movie anyways. Who knows.
Most western I have seen were old, I saw some old silent John Fords (and loved them!), and now “Stagecoach”. I don’t recall the situation in which I heard of the film for the first time, and despite its title, I didn’t even suspect that the story would be similar to “Boule de Suif”. I used to hate the novella, because I hated its characters, but I remember it well. That probably means that the novella was actually good, because it was capable of producing such a hatred against the “established bourgeois class”. “Stagecoach” has a much more accessible plot where most characters are at least comical and when they were not likable, at least they were entertaining. I read that it was John Wayne’s first major role, and for that, he was already surprisingly good.
I should be able to say more about the relationship between “Stagecoach” and “Boule de Suif” as well as my happy surprise to have found a film version of the novella, but really, there’s nothing deep about it. A stagecoach is a fitting place to bring these different people together and provides a great backdrop some of the best characterizations, and both the novella and the film are doing an impressive job at implementing it. But apart from that general premise, there aren’t that many similarities.
All in all, “Stagecoach” is a very typical Western, overloaded with clichés (especially those about Mexicans and Indians), but beautifully crafted. I love John Ford.