Stagecoach (The Criterion Collection)

Yes, it is an improvement over the WB edition...but you should own both!
I've just viewed the latest Criterion edition of Stagecoach and compared it side by side with the WB 2 disc set. The picture is improved.... not perfect ...but much better. I prefer the commentary by Scott Eyman on the WB edition. The second disc on the WB set has the spectacular American Masters Documentary and a wonderful featurette. The new Blu-Ray and DVD sets by Criterion also have a wealth of bonus features topped by an hour interview with Ford himself! If you are a fan I'd keep the older edition for the bonus features and Eymans commentary and feel good about adding the new edition for better picture and non-repeated bonus features. The featurette on the stunt man Yakima Canutt is excellent, Bogdonovich is always interesting...Ford home movies fun.....it's a solid Criterion package!

Criterion Gives this Classic Western the Deluxe Treatment!
This special edition is jam-packed with goodies for fans of the film and of the western genre, starting off with an audio commentary on the first disc by film historian and western scholar Jim Kitses. He challenges the conventional view that Stagecoach lacks the depth and command of craft of John Ford's later films. Kitses does a fantastic job of explaining how Ford's camerawork and the use of invisible editing set up differences in class and established genre conventions. When not offering expert analysis, he provides biographical information on various cast members in this eloquent and informative track.

Also included on this disc is a trailer.

Disc two starts off with "Bucking Broadway," a 54-minute silent film from 1917 that stars John Ford favorite Harry Carey as a cowboy whose true love is taken away by a big city type. It features many of the themes and conventions that Ford would explore again and again in later films.

There is a 1968 interview...

Recipe for a classic
Let's see - take a whiskey drummer, add a boozy doctor (served in the Union Army,) a snaky gambler (Confederate vet played by John Carradine,) a good girl (haughty young wife of a horse soldier posted out west with the 6th Cavalry,) and an obnoxious and imperious businessman with a secret to hide. Add one bad girl (Claire Trevor) driven our of town with the drunken doc by the town's respectable marm hens, and one cuffed outlaw, the Ringo Kid (John Wayne.) Shake vigorously in a stagecoach plunging violently through hostile Apache territory.

Made in 1939, the Year of the Motion Picture, John Ford's STAGECOACH is pretty much everything you want or need in a western. Nominated for a slew of Academy Awards, it took one home when Thomas Mitchell won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as the shrewd, whiskey-loving physician. In 1995 it was placed on the National Film Registry by the National Film Preservation Board.

Well, this is the first film Ford shot in...

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