Analyse Stage Coach film en anglais (niveau Lv1)

Dear cowboy or cowgirl, you must...

1.Watch a classic western (use the filmography and take your pick in the " classic westerns" or "John Ford" parts).

2.Write an essay on it to study...

a) How the director uses stock characters and typical situations. (You can write a short summary of the plot, but it is your analysis which really matters.)

b) To what extent the film develops and deals with the myth of the conquest of the West.

During the holidays, I watched the movie Stagecoach (1939) created by the director John Ford. This film is a masterpiece of the classic western that represents the American society of the late nineteenth century.

John Ford is a director of Irish origin (was born in 1894 and died in 1973); he began his career in 1912 as an accessorist for his brother Francis. Then he had great success because he made more than 130 films in 50 years of career. He is considered as the creator of the western.

This film take place in the 1880s and breaks through the wild plains of Arizona across Indian lands. A stagecoach is traveling from the frontier town of Tonto, Arizona to Lordsburg, New Mexico while Geronimo, the Apache chief, has just jumped the reservation and starts an uprising.

On board, there are nine characters: a prostitute being thrown out of town by a group of women, a drunken doctor, a gentlemen card shark, a meek whiskey salesman, a crooked banker, a pregnant woman on her way to meet her husband, and a young cowboy who just broke out of jail and out to revenge his family's murder. The coach driver and his shotgun complete the group. Before leaving Tonto, the passengers are notified by the Calvary that they are now traveling at their own considerable risk. The basic structure of the plot is that disaster films. Passengers are introduced, and they then face a tremendous danger, one in which their true characters are tested and revealed. While the Indian threat is more pressing, power plays out in the stagecoach and its occupants must collaborate.

The structure of the film is very formal and divided into eight episodes, four scenes of action alternating with four scenes of character interaction. There is a short prologue regarding the cavalry and the telegraph wires, then a 12-minute sequence in the town of Tonto, including the introduction of most of the characters and the establishment of their class distinctions; follows the first part of the trip on the stagecoach to Lordsburg, then the Dry Fork way station where the coach stops for food – including a memorable dinner table scene. We have then the second part of the trip toward Apache Wells in the snow, and The Apache Wells outpost, where the young woman’s baby is born. Then we have the final part of the trip to Lordsburg, including the exciting Indian attack and the cavalry rescue. And the trip end in the town of Lordsburg, where Ringo Kid faces the Plummers in a shoot-out

We can say that Stagecoach is a classic western because the director uses stock characters and typical situations. We have a woman going into labor as a doctor orders, "Boil water! Hot water! ; a prostitute with a heart of gold, an evil banker, a shifty gambler, a pure-hearted heroine, murderous Apaches, a sultry Indian wife, a chase scene with a stagecoach driver going hell for leather. We can see saloons, corrals, vast landscapes, camp fires, and the U. S. Cavalry--which sounds the charge before riding to the rescue. The film's attitudes toward Native Americans are unenlightened. The Apaches are seen simply as murderous savages; there is no suggestion the white men have invaded their

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