“I thought you never drew on a man?”
“That's right, sir. Only on snakes.”
A surprisingly good midnight movie. Wagon Master is the third John Ford film I’ve seen, and it shares the same positives and negatives of the other two. It was very enjoyable to watch the characters interact on screen, as the cast had great chemistry and the script was pretty solid. However, for a movie with such a short run time, it felt way longer than it actually is. I had this problem with The Searchers and Stagecoach, and in both cases - and now in Wagon Master - I found myself a little disengaged at some points.
The filmmaking, while definitely technically competent, did feel a little dated in a way. I do appreciate that John Ford was obviously a talented and successful director, and maybe his style just isn’t really for me, but the filmmaking in this just felt quite stale and uninteresting to me. It almost feels like if film existed in the old west to the degree it did in 1950, I would think Wagon Master was a documentary. This is partly due to the script, performances and production design, but I think it’s also down to the direction, at least in some part. This could be considered a good thing by many people, and I can understand that for sure, but for me at least it just felt a little dated. I definitely had a good time watching this, but I still had some issues with certain aspects of the film.
“I thought you never drew on a man?”
“That's right, sir. Only on snakes.”
A surprisingly good midnight movie. Wagon Master is the third John Ford film I’ve seen, and it shares the same positives and negatives of the other two. It was very enjoyable to watch the characters interact on screen, as the cast had great chemistry and the script was pretty solid. However, for a movie with such a short run time, it felt way longer than it actually is. I had this problem with The Searchers and Stagecoach, and in both cases - and now in Wagon Master - I found myself a little disengaged at some points.
The filmmaking, while definitely technically competent, did feel a little dated in a way. I do appreciate that John Ford was obviously a talented and successful director, and maybe his style just isn’t really for me, but the filmmaking in this just felt quite stale and uninteresting to me. It almost feels like if film existed in the old west to the degree it did in 1950, I would think Wagon Master was a documentary. This is partly due to the script, performances and production design, but I think it’s also down to the direction, at least in some part. This could be considered a good thing by many people, and I can understand that for sure, but for me at least it just felt a little dated. I definitely had a good time watching this, but I still had some issues with certain aspects of the film.
