Billy the Kid (1930), directed by King Vidor. This is King Vidor’s first western, and it has the look of silent westerns even including intertitles. The costumes, the sets, the landscapes, the camera placings, and the acting are all reminiscent of the silent period in film. Of course, the film does have sound; it is 1930. The story begins with a written statement from the Governor of New Mexico informing us that Billy the Kid was an honourable man, out for justice. In other words, we see at the outset that this story sets out to reinvent history, to present a fiction, and to participate in the American tendency to make heroes out of villains. The role of Billy goes to a young John (later Johnny) Mack Brown, and I suspect the makers of this film thought this gig would make a star out of him. Well, things worked out for Johnny about the same way they worked out for John Wayne and The Big Trail in the same year. Both Mack Brown and Wayne ended up on Poverty Row. Anyhow, the story is familiar. We have the Lincoln County war, the hatred of Bob Ballinger (Warner Richmond) for Billy, the siege at the McSween ranch, and the uneasy friendship between Billy and Pat Garrett (Wallace Berry). Mack Brown has a certain boyish charm, and Wallace Berry is his bluff broad self. Along for comic relief is Roscoe Ates as Old Stuff. The action has a brutality that may surprise some viewers. The film has its moments, but it cannot compare to Vidor’s later westerns, especially Duel in the Sun (1946, affectionately known as “Lust in the Dust”), and Man Without a Star (1956).

Overland Stage Raiders (1938), directed by George Sherman. This one is about the Three Mesquiteers (Stony Brook, Tuscon Smith, and Lullaby Joslin accompanied by Elmer) forming an airplane company to fly gold and passengers from one place to another. Their flying business threatens to ruin the business of the local bus company thereby setting up a situation in which the bus company bad guys try to ruin the flying business. John Wayne plays Stony Brook just a year before he will vault to stardom in Stagecoach. He seems mildly interested in playing Stony. He also seems mildly interested in the film’s female lead, Beth Hoyt, played by Louise Brooks in her final film role. She too seems only mildly interested in playing Beth Hoyt, and she is without the famous hair that she popularized in her late silent films. The plot and action are fairly absurd, but this is not unusual for this kind of film. As a western, it boasts not only horses, but trains, busses, and airplanes. Wayne makes his entrance by jumping from an airplane. Lullaby’s dummy friend, Elmer, makes only a small appearance, but this appearance is as absurdly concocted as much of the other goings-on in the film. The characters treat Elmer as if he was human, and he, in return, appears to relish his humanity. As an entry in Republic’s Three Mesquiteers series, it holds its own, and it does have Louse Brooks.

Stagecoach (1939), directed by John Ford. Famously, Orson Welles claimed to have watched Stagecoach 40 times in preparation for filming Citizen Kane. Also, when asked what directors he liked, Welles replied that he like the old masters, John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford. And so we have Stagecoach, a film that sings a song of camera, as a review at the time noted. This film saves its action for the last third of its running time, the first two thirds being more concerned with character and context. The context here has to do with bankers (one character notes that the country would do well to have a businessman as president!), belles, and brigands. Society, encapsulated in the small community inside and on the stagecoach, is replete with prejudice, misunderstanding, honour, honour misplaced, innocence and experience. As Welles says, the film offers a course in film making in its camera placements, cinematography, choreography, lighting, deep focus, and so on. As many have noted, Ford breaks the 180 degree rule, but he does so to great effect. He also gives us, for the first time, the backdrop of Monument Valley, a location that becomes a metonymy for all that the west represents. That final third of the film has a couple of stunning stunts carried out by the incomparable Yakima Canutt. Of course, the film also has its failings. Here, from Wikipedia, is a review of its failings.

"Along with certain other classic films of its period (e.g., Gone With the Wind [20]; [21]), Stagecoach has been criticized for its depiction of historical settings and events, as well as for racist depictions of Native Americans generally and of Apaches in particular. Stagecoach is set at a time of escalating white settler encroachment upon, and forcible seizure of, Native American lands in the American Southwest, a process that eventually forced Native Americans onto reservations. Although its main characters are all settlers of one kind or another, the film presents Apache violence against settlers wholly absent from this historical context. Writing in 2011, Roger Ebert noted: "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 land. Ford shared that simple view with countless other makers of Westerns, and if it was crude in 1939 it was even more so as late as 'The Searchers' (1956), the greatest Ford/Wayne collaboration". Moreover, Stagecoach's iconic stagecoach chase scene has been criticized for its use of what is by now a long-clichéd plot device in Western films: that of inexperienced and vastly outgunned white settlers soundly defeating seasoned Native American warriors despite impossible odds; viewed in this light, the stagecoach chase scene appears both absurd and racially questionable."

The last remark about the small band defeating a much larger group of attackers is somewhat misleading. The end here has the familiar cliché that has the cavalry arriving in the nick of time to avoid a certain disaster. 

Despite its failings, Stagecoach marks an important moment in the development of film and this film's specific genre.