Stagecoach revolutionized the Western. Nowadays it is fashionable to speak of it as 'the Western which created the clichés,' but Stagecoach did not create clichés nor even sustain them. It defined Western archetypes and created a new frame of reference rich in irony and sophistication….

The effect of the film has been mixed. On the one hand, the self-consciousness it brought to the form has enabled the Western to continually transform itself, chameleon-like, to pressures in the society which produces it. Before Stagecoach, the Western seemed to be dying; after Stagecoach, it became the one permanently popular film genre. (p. 53)

What makes Stagecoach so durable, however, is not its historical significance but the vividness with which it creates a dream landscape from the American past and peoples it with simple and striking characters who, despite their reincarnation in countless 'A' and 'B' Westerns, still retain...