Task: Story Composition
Input (English): Fact1: film opens with prelude showing murderous robbery by outlaw family, Fact2: wagon train is being expelled from Crystal City by townspeople and at last minute horse traders, Fact3: Travis Blue and Sandy Owens take wagon master job last minute horse traders, Fact4: wagon of medicine show troupe have become stranded without water, Fact5: onward passage of wagon train is marked by beginnings of romances between Travis and Denver and between Sandy and Mormon 's daughter and also by Mormon square dance celebrating successful desert passage and by pow-wow dance with band of Navajo
Output (English): The film opens with a prelude showing a murderous robbery by the outlaw Clegg family the patriarch Shiloh Charles Kemper and his four boys. The credits then follow the prelude, which was a stylistic innovation at its time. A Mormon wagon train led by the Elder Wiggs Ward Bond around 1880 has reached Crystal City, and needs a wagon master to lead it further to its destination—the San Juan River country in southeastern Utah Territory. Their wagon train is being expelled from Crystal City by the townspeople there, and at the last minute horse traders Travis Blue Ben Johnson and Sandy Owens Harry Carey, Jr. take the wagon master job. After resuming its journey west, the train finds and adds the wagon of a medicine show troupe, who, en route to California, have become stranded without water. The onward passage of the wagon train is marked by the beginnings of romances between Travis and Denver Joanne Dru, a female entertainer with the medicine troupe, and between Sandy and a Mormons daughter, and also by a Mormon square dance celebrating a successful desert passage, and by a powwow dance with a band of Navajo. All goes well enough until the Cleggs, fleeing a posse from Crystal City, force themselves into the wagon train. The train surmounts an encounter with the posse, a washed out trail blocking the way west, and ultimately a violent confrontation with the homicidal Cleggs. The films conclusion leaves the wagon train and its wagon master on the verge of entry into the San Juan country. There is a final montage, which Richard Jameson characterizes as follows: Wagon Master has scant interest in the prosaic, being preeminently a musical and a poem.... its the final montage that lifts the movie into another realm entirely. There are shots weve seen before—landmarks, vistas, the communal dance—but also shots we havent.... Its a subtler, deeper variation on the closing, transfiguring memory images of How Green Was My Valley 1941.