Ward Bond is the hot-tempered Elder Weggs, who is leading his Mormon brethren on a westward journey to 'a valley that's been reserved for us by the Lord.' He prevails upon two itinerant horse traders -- Travis (Ben Johnson) and Sandy (Harry Carey Jr.) -- to guide them across the desert to their promised land of the San Juan River. As they make their way, the wagon train picks up members of a broken down medicine show troupe and The Cleggs, a group of psychopathically evil outlaws who end up taking over the wagon train. Meanwhile, Sandy keeps badgering Travis to 'make his play' and take back the wagon trade from the Cleggs.
Ford is not much interested in story in Wagon Master and spends most of the running time chronicling the Mormon group's frontier staunchness and determination (except for a quick pre-credit sequence, the Cleggs do not make their appearance in the film until the film is half over). Wagon Master is all about the strength of the community and the characters of Wagon Master are neither flamboyant nor larger-than-life. The characters just are and an individual's strength is how that individual can set aside his individuality and meld into the community for the common good. Ford sanctifies this communality with wonderfully vibrant and stirring set pieces -- the Mormons fording a river in their way; toiling through an arid desert; breaking a path through the mountains. And Ford has never been more joyous in capturing the Mormon community hoedowns, square dances, and Indian pow-wows than in Wagon Master.
Wagon Master also features rousing and mythic tunes by Stan Jones ('Shadows in the Dust,' 'Song of the Wagon Master,' 'Wagons West') sung by The Sons of the Pioneers. The music score itself is sparse and Ford relies instead on the sounds of a wagon train on the trail as a discordant desert symphony -- accenting the wagon wheels crunching against the desert rocks and the echoing and barren resonant hooves of a lone horse racing through the desert to warn the wagon train of impending danger.
Wagon Master is one of Ford's masterworks, a sublime, crisp, unpretentious western that doesn't wear its mythos on its sleeve.
No where'd we partk the wagon?
