film revolutionized the Western and revitalized the form. Stagecoach allows Ford to display his ability with a unique grouping of characters, in this case held together by all being passengers on the stage. This aspect of the film is very tightly controlled and keeps the interplay within a small area. The action here is internalized, kept inside the stage or the stage stops. McBride and Wilmington feel that Dudley Nichols's screenplay is excessively literary, so much so that it saddled subsequent Westerns with the need to be philosophical in order to be considered important. They find that the film has enduring value, however, for the way Ford peoples the landscape "with simple and striking characters who, despite their reincarnation in countless 'A' and 'B' Westerns, still retain a believable ambivalence and depth" (McBride and Wilmington 54). These characters and their small world are treated as a microcosm. Ford further gains a great deal of power from his visuals, contrasting the enclosed nature of the stagecoach with the
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