Question: Build a movie plot around this: Who is alone with a child? Jeanne with a daughter, and David with Simon
Answer:
France 1870: Napoleon III has just lost the war against Prussia and left Paris in poverty. Young Jeanne ditches her lieutenant fiancee when she falls in love with photographer Francis. They emigrate to America,catching a Wagon Train to the West. While on the wagon train Jeanne sees a Polish fortune teller who predicts Francis will die and Jeanne will never return to Paris.Jeanne marries Francis and they have a daughter. They settle in Redwood in the still wild west, where they open a photography studio. Francis becomes the town photographer and follows the news although the Redland Gazette cannot print his photographs and cannot afford to transfer the photos to etchings. But he persists in photographing fires and hangings of criminals.SPOILER: Francis is shot by men who object to his incessant photographing of events.In the parallel plot veterinarian David Williams lives on his remote farm with his unhappy wife who wants him to move to Redwood else she will return to Philadelphia for family and company. She gives birth to their son Simon and threatens to take him to Philadelphia never to return. "Over my dead body" David retorts.SPOILER: David blows off steam at the town saloon where he shoots "polo pool" (billiards on horseback) and wins. He is kind of a gambler. He returns home to find his wife murdered.David starts his new life in the town where Jeanne and Francis have set up their photo studio. He takes his son Simon to the town schoolteacher who also takes care of the children of "saloon girls." There he meets Jeanne whose daughter goes to the school, and they become acquainted. Because of their mutual past tragedies, they eventually fall in love.David, ever the gambler, enters the "race of the century" where runners, buckboards and horse riders vie for plots of land given by the owner of the town newspaper.SPOILER: After the race David is kidnapped, blindfolded and taken to an outlaw hideout to treat a man who had been shot. He notices one of the outlaws is wearing his wife's bracelet. When the outlaws...