By: Liat Fishman, Helen Cohen & Melissa Leithwood

What made Stagecoach a quintessential Western movie?

Plot summary from filmsite.org: “In Stagecoach , nine passengers during a stagecoach journey are placed together in a position of danger, one in which their true characters are tested and revealed. Major social issues and themes (sexual and social prejudice, alcoholism, childbirth, greed, shame, redemption and revenge) are closely mixed together into an exciting adventure story.”
Using Grossberg's genre analysis, we can see how Stagecoach fit the standard conventions defining the Western. The movie uses a dualistic model whereby each character is contrasted with the others based on binary opposites such as respectable vs. disrespectable.

Respectable	Disrespectable
Banker Gatewood	Prostitute Dallas
Confederate Hatfield	Outlaw Ringo Kid
Pregnant Mrs. Lucy Mallory	Alcoholic drunk Doc Boone

“ In this film - actually a morality play, each of the characters are representative, archetypal character types, divided initially between respectable and disrespectable social outcasts. However by film's end, the disreputable members of society prove to be the most noble, virtuous, and selfless.” Filmsite.org
Characters - a fraudulent banker, a prostitute, a Confederate gambler, a whiskey salesman, an alcoholic and disgraced frontier doctor, a pregnant young bride, a stage driver, a Marshal, an escaped outlaw.
Setting - American southwest in the 1880s: a small town called Tonto, Arizona, Monument Valley, desert landscape, New Mexico
Events – bank theft, chase scene, proposal, journey, shootout

In keeping with the 7 Plots by David Lusted Stagecoach
uses "The Journey" as the basis for the story. The plot centres on the
journey of 9 passengers heading to a military unit, each with their own
intentions and reasons for getting there.

"Stagecoach had a formative and regenerative influence on all future westerns, raising the stature of 30's B-Westerns for years to come by concentrating on the film's characters." http://www.filmsite.org/westernfilms2.html

As this outline suggests, Stagecoach employs much of the standard Western conventions that the genre requires. Perhaps this close following to traditional conventions speaks to its popularity at a time when the Western was still a relatively new genre. Stagecoach set another example, perhaps the best example, of a typical Western movie in the 1930s. But its popularity never dwindled, and by today's standards, Stagecoach is still considered a quintessential Western movie, a film that set a benchmark within the genre and helped to reinforce the standards which all Westerns share.

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