Week 1

Stagecoach (1939)

 

This feature film was a box office smash and a genre-changing Western when Walter Wanger Productions released it in 1939.  Director John Ford and writer Dudley Nichols created a hero, bent on murdering three men in cold blood, who falls in love with a prostitute. 

 

  

   Lectures

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Play media comment.The Western Introductory Lecture (6:56) Transcript Download Transcript

Play media comment.Stagecoach (1939) Introductory Lecture (11:42) Transcript Download Transcript

Play media comment. Stagecoach (1939) Lighting (6:15) Transcript Download Transcript

 
Films

sssss	Feature Film	sssssssssssssssssss	Supplementary Video
	Stagecoach (1939) Links to an external site.		The Great Train Robbery (1902) Links to an external site.

 

 

 Amazon.com

Required Readings

• “Stagecoach Links to an external site.” by Frank S. Nugent, published March 3, 1939, in The New York Times
  
  
• “Stagecoach Links to an external site.” by Roger Ebert, published August 1, 2011, at Roger Ebert.com
  
  
• “Ford Till 47 Links to an external site.” by Tag Gallagher, published in Senses in Cinema (April 2004)

 

 

  Other Readings

• “On John Ford’s Stagecoach Links to an external site.” adapted from the DGA’s Action Magazine (Sept./Oct. 1971)
  
  
•  “Letter III: What is an American? Links to an external site.” in Letters from an American Farmer by J. Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur in Project Gutenberg
  
  
• The Frontier in American History Links to an external site.by Frederick Jackson Turner in Project Gutenberg

  

 

                    

   

      

 

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