Unrecognized Classic


I just saw the film for the first time over the weekennd and was blown away. Johnson and Carey make a great team, and the supporting characters add the right touches of humor and menace. Although in black-and-white, the landscapes are breathtaking. What a shame that this picture is rarely seen. It should be held in the same regard as Ford's Cavalry trilogy or MY DARLING CLEMENTINE.

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This was shown on british TV yesterday and I thought,'oh my god, another very old school western!'...but the way the characters very quickly became established and the story just unfolded grabbed my attention after 10 minutes .I thoroughly enjoyed the humanity of the story of the wagon train journey.If you don't mind hearing some very cheesy songs that bind the journey together and harp back to very simple story telling then this is a good example.

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John Ford said that Wagon Master was the film that came closest to achieving what he had hoped to do and called it "the purest and simplest Western I ever made."

It's one of Ford's very, very best films. Each frame is just teeming with life and the images are powerful and beautiful. Like Delacroix in motion. And the story itself is so poetic and so leisurely narrated and the use of songs in place of a score(pre-figuring Altman's use of Cohen tracks as score for McCabe & Mrs. Miller) makes it a musical really.

But at the same time that makes it thoroughly unsexy for most audiences who want to see westerns. It's unlike any Western of the 50's which is the highest peak of the western period. The only film closest to it is Nicholas Ray's The Lusty Men which is set in the 20th Century among itinerant rodeo performers.


"Ça va by me, madame...Ça va by me!" - The Red Shoes

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Just a fantastic piece of cinema, saw it for the first time over the weekend & to me it is John Ford's best western. Great little shoot-out for the finale.

Now that TCM finally played it, why not a DVD release?



The way I see it, is that we weren't retreating, we were just attacking in a new direction.

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Now that TCM finally played it, why not a DVD release?

Many reasons - one it doesn't fit in with how Westerns are usually marketed on DVDs(no violence or big action scenes). Two the cast is full of character actors rather than big names. The only claim to fame or marketability is the fact that it served as the inspiration for a very popular 50s TV Show Wagon Train(which like MASH has eclipsed it's superior cinematic source).



"Ça va by me, madame...Ça va by me!" - The Red Shoes

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Your points are valid, no big stars, bo big action sequences, just damn good cinema. I still have hope that the cinematic world will eventually catch on and recognize this film as a classic.

John Ford has such a pile of movies on DVD for good reason, I believe that he actually has multiple box sets. I once read he considered this film to be his most "pure" western so just maybe some day...





The way I see it, is that we weren't retreating, we were just attacking in a new direction.

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And funny that Wagon Train was one of the main inspirations for Star Trek. John Ford and Gene Roddenberry, two of a kind?

Where's your crew?
On the 3rd planet.
There IS no 3rd planet!
Don't you think I know that?

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If you're region free, there's a dvd release in the UK.

We are surrounded by worn-out images, and we deserve new ones.

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I imagine this was supposed to make Ben Johnson a star and it didn't. To see him riding "hell bent for leather" in this and SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON are some of the most exciting sequences I can think of. Maybe his persona was too laid back.

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Ol' Son didn't WANT to be a star! He wanted to be a cowboy, rodeo champ and stunt man! He would say to Ford "too many words!" When handed the script!

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Warners has announced the U.S. (Region 1) release of RKO's "Wagon Master" on September 15, 2009.

Source: classicflix.com

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Just saw this for the first time on the newly released Region 1 Warner DVD (very good transfer) and I wasn't really knocked out by the film. Not a classic to me by any means, and The Searchers is by far his best western IMO. Wagon Master has many of the usual ingredients of a Ford picture which isn't a bad thing- the familiar actors he's used before and after, the western scenery and iconic compositions (both of landscapes and individual closeups of actors faces), and familiar themes of family and "the people" for some examples. But in this case it's been done before better in The Grapes of Wrath and later in The Searchers for a couple of examples. It is a simple story and is handsomely presented but not very interesting to me overall. It is sort of an anachronistic western in the beginning of what someone earlier said was really the decade of the western, whose films were breaking new ground in themes, look and feel. Though I think it a better film, Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance interestingly bookended that decade or so of the great westerns era with another similarly anachronistic western that seemed dated compared to contemporary westerns such as The Magnificent Seven.

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when it comes to movies like this, I think black and white is vastly superior. The photography in this is breathtaking, something The Searchers never achieves.

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I agree. This is what a classic Western looks like.

The DVD is wonderful. It has just an excellent transfer and the commentary with Harry Carry Jr and Peter Bogdanovich is very interesting. I really enjoyed this film and I'm glad I have it with my other John Ford classics.

http://www.dvdsavant.com/s3011wago.html
Really states my own feelings about this underrated movie.

Frank: Just a man.
Harmonica: An ancient race.

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John Ford is one of the greats for the simple reason that he shows us out past, a past that's gone into the dust that sits aside those big hills and rocks in his films. His films keep us connected with that long ago past life out in the Western valleys. A Wagon Master? The only "master" people know nowadays is "master-chef". Watch this and get another chance to go into Ford's world.

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