Stagecoach

Stagecoach holds our attention effortlessly and is paced with the elegance of a symphony. Read full review

Here, in a sentence, is a movie of the grand old school, a genuine rib-thumper and a beautiful sight to see. Read full review

The classic western, Stagecoach is one of John Ford's greatest frontier epics. Read full review

Stagecoach gives fine shading to a simple story, making it look and feel like a forgotten American myth. Read full review

Stagecoach both revived and elevated the Western. Read full review

What drew the crowds back in 1939 and what has kept them coming is not the film's simmering subtexts but the absolutely fantastic ambush sequence as the stage thunders across the salt flats of Monument Valley. With this, Ford transformed the western. Read full review

The contrast between the innocence of the wilderness and the ambiguous 'blessings of civilisation' are brilliantly stitched into a smoothly developed narrative, which climaxes with the famous Indian attack on the stagecoach. Read full review

Action-packed and jaw-droppingly epic (it was the first time director John Ford ever shot in Monument Valley), Stagecoach is the perfect Western to show to people who don’t like Westerns. Read full review

Superb performances by John Wayne, Claire Trevor and Thomas Mitchell -- who won the Oscar for best supporting actor -- make for an authentic classic that has been copied but never equaled. [25 Feb 2008, p.C8]

Stagecoach remains a tale for our times. Read full review

Perhaps the most likable of all Westerns, and a Grand Hotel-on-wheels movie that has just about everything--adventure, romance, chivalry--and all of it very simple and traditional.

If this is the Old West of our dreams, it’s one that exists in an outsider’s limbo, away from society’s rules, alternating between the breathtaking breadth of the American landscape and the Germanically shadowy lighting of Ford’s claustrophobic interiors. Read full review

Although undeniably a western, Stagecoach transcends the genre, as both a character study of the relationships among a socially mismatched crew of stagecoach passengers and an action movie about their attempts to avoid the dangerous Geronimo and his Apache tribe. And that action, by the way, is impressive, even by today's standards. [28 May 2010, p.WE37]

Sweeping and powerful drama of the American frontier, Stagecoach displays potentialities that can easily drive it through as one of the surprise big grossers of the year. Without strong marquee names, picture nevertheless presents wide range of exploitation to attract, and will carry far through word-of-mouth after it gets rolling. Read full review

Certainly it's the weakest of Ford's major westerns, burdened with a schematic and pretentious Dudley Nichols script (the "cross section of society" on board the stagecoach), but its virtues remain intact. Read full review