The film: John Wayne had already appeared in about 80 films before he found lasting fame as the Ringo Kid in director John Ford's classic western Stagecoach. The film marked a return to westerns for Ford after a 13-year break. Stagecoach also lifted the genre out of the B-movie and Saturday morning-serial circuit, and established the western as a bankable vehicle for big-name stars and serious directors.

Stagecoach brings together nine disparate characters for a perilous cross-country journey. These include an alcoholic doctor, a sharpshooting southern gambler, a meek whiskey salesman and two vulnerable females, as well as Wayne's escaped convict and the sheriff who is bringing him in. Familiar by modern standards, but quite an original congregation in 1939, the characters are well developed by the time the Apaches launch their attack - one of cinema's most celebrated chase sequences - towards the end of the film.

Ford didn't discover the magnificent Monument Valley, but he made it famous with this and several other productions that he made there, and he used it so extensively in Stagecoach that it was traversed at least three times during filming.

Stagecoach was also a huge influence on many directors, including Orson Welles, who is said to have screened it more than 40 times while shooting Citizen Kane, and some critics still cite it as the best western ever made.

The extras: This two-disc special edition from Warner provides a substantial selection of extras including an 82-minute documentary titled John Ford/John Wayne: The Filmmaker & the Legend, which covers the careers of both, especially their many later collaborations. Stagecoach: A Story of Redemption is a new 30-minute making-of featurette that looks at the film in some detail, and even more insight is available on the audio commentary over the main feature provided by Ford biographer Scott Eyman. Also included is a rather scratchy 30-minute audio recording of a radio adaptation of Stagecoach released soon after the film, featuring Claire Trevor and Randolph Scott.

Picture quality seems to have suffered from too much digital contrast boosting, which has brought up some minor film damage that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.