Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 190: Sun July 8

Stagecoach (Ford, 1939): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 4pm
This film is screening as part of the BFI Southbank Passport to Cinema season and will be introduced by Dominic Power.

Chicago Reader review:
'It's fashionable to put down John Ford's 1939 classic; 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. The visual contrast of claustrophobic interior spaces (the coach, the various way stations) with the expanse of Monument Valley provides a vivid physical correlative to the film's thematic push for freedom, and the linear plot has a captivating metaphorical quality in its progress from a dying city through the wilderness to a city reborn. The film moves from east to west, with all that implies.' Dave Kehr


Here is the trailer.

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