"Wagon Master" occupies a position in John Ford's filmography in the middle of his "cavalry trilogy", being made in 1950 after the first two episodes, "Fort Apache" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon", and immediately before the third, "Rio Grande". Those three films tell the story of the wars between the US Cavalry and the Native American peoples of the South-West, but "Wagon Master" is a quite different type of Western. It tells the story of a Mormon pioneer wagon train to the San Juan River in Utah. The Mormons are portrayed as pacifists who, for religious reasons, do not carry guns. (This appears to be historically inaccurate, as Mormon pioneers generally did carry guns for protection against bandits, hostile Indians and wild animals). Although the film's title refers to a singular "wagon master", there are in fact two wagon masters Travis Blue and Sandy Owens, hired by the Mormons to lead them through unfamiliar territory.
Unlike most of Ford's films, this one does not include a big-name star. (At this period his favourites were John Wayne and Henry Fonda). The two best known actors are probably Ben Johnson as Travis and Ward Bond as a Mormon Elder. This lack of a big name may have been a deliberate choice by the director, because this is a film about shared hardships and collective efforts to overcome them rather than individual heroics. There are two main strands to the plot. One concerns the addition to the wagon train of a group of showpeople who have become stranded. Although the Mormons accept them out of common humanity, the clash of values between the two groups leads to some tensions, especially when Travis falls in love with a female entertainer whom the Mormons regard as a woman of low morals. The other strand involves a family of outlaws (a father and four sons) who attempt to rob the wagon train, leading to a shootout between the robbers and the wagon masters.
This shootout is one of only a few action sequences in the film, and the only violent one. This is a more peaceful film than any of the cavalry trilogy. The wagon train do have an encounter with the local Navajo Indians, but all ends peacefully, and the Navajo even invite the white people to a dance. The film, however, has been described as less an action-adventure movie than a poetic celebration of the opening-up of the American West. As often with Ford's films, there is an emphasis on visual beauty and on the photography of the scenery. Other directors from this period, such as George Stevens, Anthony Mann and William Wyler, who exploited the beauty of the Western landscapes generally did so by using colour; Ford could do so in monochrome, as he does here.
Unlike their Mormon employers, Travis and Sandy have no moral scruples about carrying or using weapons, and the film has been seen as a study of the ethics of pacifism. The Mormons' adherence to their principles of non-violence may seem admirable, but without Travis and Sandy to defend them from the outlaws, their Elder would have been killed, their grain (the most valuable thing they are carrying) stolen and their venture would have ended in failure. George Orwell once said that "Those who abjure violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf" and Ford seems to be making a similar point here. 7/10.
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