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Thursday, February 24, 2022

WAGON MASTER (1950)

Like the humble grain seed they carry that’s worth more than gold to Mormon pioneers on their way West, so too the modest, plain-spoken beauty of this life-affirming John Ford Western, unjustly in the shade of recent larger efforts, FORT APACHE/’48 and SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON/’49.  Opening in violence as a vicious family rob a bank and leave in cold-blooded murder, the film soon pivots toward Westward idyll as fancy-free horse traders Ben Johnson & Harry Carey Jr. take up Ward Bond’s offer to lead his band of Mormon settlers to promised land.  (All three shining in first leads.)  Along the way, they’ll rescue a stranded little Medicine Show (heathens, but nice ones, especially strong-willed Joanna Dru), and later on, those thieving psychopaths we met in the opening.  Ford loads on just the right amount of community trials & celebrations (lots of singing in this one), and natural obstacles to overcome, using a gentle touch to capture the rhythm of wagon-train life, often as not in still shots that never feel static thanks to visual fugues of multi-plane staging.  Even Indians offer ceremonial dance rather than danger here, seeing Mormons as fellow victims of the white man.  And when the inevitable showdown comes, it’s swift rather than overblown and so cleanly staged, you could give a police report on it.  With Ford taking the opportunity to set up one of his earliest film curtain calls to show each principal with their wish granted, and last honors going to a small pony touching ground after a river crossing.  Long a personal favorite for Ford, it’s easy to see why.

DOUBLE-BILL: Compliment this overlooked Western masterpiece with Ford's equally overlooked war film THEY WERE EXPENDABLE/’45.

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