If you have to ask what film, you may be at the wrong blog. This screen cap is ripped directly from the standard-def disc of the new Criterion transfer; both this and the Blu-ray came under my very blessed transom today. I’ve got too much work at the immediate moment to sit down and study/enjoy the new versions… but there’s little else I’d rather be doing at this moment! I’ll get to it ASAP, and give you a lengthy report soon thereafter.
I’ve probably told this story in these parts before, but STAGECOACH was one of two movies– the other being DIAL “M” FOR MURDER– over which I bonded with my rather thuggish younger brother.
Said brother hates things that he deems to be “old” and “gay”, both terms being more-or-less interchangeable as he uses them, as in, “Why are you watching this old black-and-white movie” and “why are they going through the Indian territory, that’s so gay”: these were the things he said when he walked into the room while I was in the middle of watching STAGECOACH.
But he sat there, and he watched it, and by the film’s end, he was as invested and enthralled as I was. So enthralled, in fact, that he asked me to start the movie over so he could see it from the beginning, this time without his usual wisecracks. (The same thing happened with DIAL M.)
Truly great cinema can do that– it can overcome someone’s unwillingness to give it the benefit of the doubt.
I can’t tell you how ecstatically happy I am about this Criterion release– it’ll be the first one I’ve bought in nearly two years.
Woohoo! My copy is winging its way to me as I type.
@ D. Cairns: Well I should certainly hope it is—you wrote the package’s booklet essay, which is excellent. Congratulations, it must have been an honor!
Love “Stagecoach” – the question is, how much of Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday in “Tombstone” was conciously ripped off? Doesn’t matter I still love both.
Stagecoach was the first Ford I ever saw. I saw it when I was 12 on TBS (when that was a public TV station) back in the ’80s and, like Tom’s brother, I was mesmerized by it. I really do think it’s a perfect kids movie.
Having seen it several more times on VHS and DVD over the years but only on transfers taken from faded and scratchy prints, I am needless to say very excited about seeing it on blu-ray.
It certainly was an hono(u)r! And a pleasure too, once I got over the awe.
It’s already streaming at Netflix…