Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939): In my moviegoing, I have little patience for respectable characters. The white-hatted hero, pure of heart, the virtuous maiden fair . . . fuck 'em all. When I sit down to root for characters in a movie, I want to see characters I can relate to: the drunks, the obsessives, the debauchees.

Stagecoach is often credited with making westerns respectable, after a brief fall from favor in the post-talkie era. This respectability is ironic, considering the glorious class of lowlifes that the picture celebrates.

John Ford's film is pleasingly schematic, with a log line any 22-year-old hophead studio executive could get his mind around: 7 mismatched people have to travel, via stagecoach, from point A to point B, while rampaging Apaches try to kill them. What's simpler than that?

What's particularly gratifying about the film, in my opinion, is the way it clearly delineates what sins are truly bad, and what sins are just fine, thank you. The motley bunch that gets thrown together on the stagecoach bound for Lordsburg are Dallas (Claire Trevor), who's a dance hall girl and woman of ill-repute (good); the Ringo Kid (John Wayne), whose family has been murdered and who is hell-bent on revenge (good); self-important banker Henry Gatewood (Berton Churchill), who's embezzled a satchel of money from his own bank (bad); Lucy Mallory (Louise Platt) who's a proud member of the bourgeoisie (bad, but redeemable so long as she takes some knocks); the disgraced Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell), who's a drunk (good); whiskey salesman Samuel Peacock (Donald Meek), who's a coward (bad), but also hocks hooch (good); and finally Hatfield (John Carradine) who's a gambler (good), but also a social climber, a Southerner, and a snob (bad). (There's also the driver, Buck, whose primary characteristic is that he's got a funny voice, which is good so far as I can tell.)

Our leads, Claire Trevor, who's been drummed out of town by the Ladies Law and Order League, and John Wayne, who's just out of prison and has a vendetta to settle, of course find some sort of love on the prairie. This was Wayne's breakthrough role after years as a B player, and Claire Trevor was always great at playing these ladies of questionable virtue (she'd be a fun one to drink with, don'tcha think?)

The film has two climaxes, the first being the classic attack on the stagecoach by the rampaging Apaches, when all the characters get to show their true stripes (Hatfield, in particular, comes off quite well). The second is the Ringo Kid's shootout with the men who killed his family . . . what's a western without a shootout in a saloon?

Of the seven passengers who board that stage bound for Lordsburg, not all are going to make it where they're going in one piece. It's one of the most enjoyable rides in cinema history, no bullshit. Definitely worth checking out.