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Tommaso wrote:What exactly are your reasons for disliking "Wagon Master", Domino?

domino harvey wrote:I think people on this board have defended other indefensible Ford films in the past (Tobacco Road, the Long Voyage Home), so I shouldn't be shocked.

domino harvey wrote: A tired collection of inconsequential events tied up with an anticlimactic bow.

Tommaso wrote:

domino harvey wrote: A tired collection of inconsequential events tied up with an anticlimactic bow.

Hmmm.... a nice definition of 'epic', I'd say.

Belmondo wrote:

Tommaso wrote:

domino harvey wrote: A tired collection of inconsequential events tied up with an anticlimactic bow.

Hmmm.... a nice definition of 'epic', I'd say.

Seen any movies with a soundtrack by the "Sons of the Pioneers" lately? This very consequential but non epic film succeeded in capturing two eras - the era in which it is set and the flip side of films noir of the same era in which it was made. I'm purposely leaving out any discussion of Ford and just praising the outstanding idea of forgoing a big star and letting that wonderful cast shine.
Great stuff. If I listen to the commentary track (a good one) right after seeing the movie, then the movie gets bought.

That Wagon Master (1950), one of Ford’s major masterpieces, grossed about a third of any of the cavalry pictures surely came as no surprise. It was a personal project, with no stars, little story, deflated drama, almost nothing to attract box office or trendy critics. Its budget was $999,370, its highest paid actor got $20,000 (Ward Bond). Almost every frame bursts with humanity, nature and cinema, quite like Rossellini’s Voyage in Italy. The story, resembling the Carey-Fords of the teens more than a 1950s western, was written by Ford himself, the only such instance after 1930. He assigned his son Pat and Frank Nugent to write the dialogs, but, said Nugent: “We did not work at all closely…. His script cutting — especially of dialogue — was rather harsh.”

Said Ford: “Wagon Master came closest to what I had hoped to achieve.” It is “the purest and simplest western I have made.”

Wagon Master’s magic is impossible to talk about on paper, yet easy to point to on the screen. It is in the sensuality of its black-and-white photography, the way light falling on landscapes and rivers and people makes love to them. And the magic is in the music. Wagon Master is a musical, a suite of movements, extended vignettes on western subjects: The poker game. The horse trade. The hold-up. The river fording. The thirsty desert. The river bath. The bucking horse. The Indian dance. The whipping. The promised land. And populating the vignettes are western types: outlaws, pilgrim families, cowboys, townspeople, showfolk, Indians. Wagon Master is about these types, the people within the types, and their lines of motion on the screen. Where they are going is, for the movie, less important than that they are in motion. Similarly, the mystery of a Fordian character is not the mystery of what he will do next; it is the mystery of him alive at a given moment.

david hare wrote:Fordian dogs, and horses and nature spaek volumes of meanings in his films.

Ben Cheshire wrote:I forgot to mention I've ordered the DVD here based equally on my love for the movie as well as my love for DVDs with original poster art on the cover. And thank god its finally on some form of good quality disc.

GringoTex wrote: The commentary track is a hoot. Bogdanovich keeps repeating "Oh jesus" over and over and Harry Carey Jr. is continuously surprised at how good the film is, as if it's his first time to see it. The best parts are the Ford interview clips played throughout.

jonah.77 wrote:David Hare's comments on this film are very perceptive. I wonder if he noticed the image of the foal planting his little hooves on soil that is recycled under the end credits: a wonderfully limpid image that captures the symbolic rebirth that is the crux of the story. The whole film feels similarly simple, straightforward, even didactic in the manner of a story for children -- to its credit.

Also, I agree that Johnson's performance in this is beautifully assured and relaxed -- another way of saying sexy. Johnson's confidence on and around horses has a lot to do with this. Joseph McBride writes that, in the films he made with Ford at least, Johnson was all nerves on the set. But you'd never know it from the finished work.

david hare wrote: We were watching Stagecoach again last night and Wayne's first appearance has the same force. .

Yojimbo wrote:

david hare wrote: We were watching Stagecoach again last night and Wayne's first appearance has the same force. .

That Wayne intro is for me one of the all-time great cinema intros: comparable with Omar Sharif in 'Lawrence of Arabia', and Orson Welles in 'The Third Man', to name but two that spring immediately to mind.

I think I read somewhere Ford saying that was a conscious plan by him to make Wayne a star; if so, it worked!

Ben Cheshire wrote:Surely Ford's least plot-driven and therefore most human film.

foggy eyes wrote:

Ben Cheshire wrote:Surely Ford's least plot-driven and therefore most human film.

Eeeep. Cross-post in the "rediculous" thread, please!

Gringo's description of this as one long lateral tracking shot is perfect. Skimming back through this thread, I'm stunned somebody called it "sloppy" - it's one seamless movement, tight as hell, side-to-side rather than head-first. Now one of my favourite Fords too, if not the one.