The Open Road: Wagon Master (35mm)

SIFF Cinema Egyptian is screening John Ford's Wagon Master on 35mm on Monday, October 19, at 7 PM. The print comes courtesy of Park Circus, so this is a proper celluloid showing rather than a digital projection. If you're a fan of the old-school western, it's a good chance to see one of Ford's more personal works on the big screen.

Ford himself called Wagon Master one of three pictures that came closest to what he wanted to achieve, and it's a bit of a departure from his usual territory. Instead of the sweeping Monument Valley landscapes he's known for, this one is set in southeastern Utah. It's a picaresque road poem of a movie: two horse traders are hired by Elder Wiggs to lead a Mormon wagon train across the desert, and along the way they cross paths with a theater troupe, sex workers, lawmen, Indigenous peoples, and outlaws. The focus is less on the destination and more on the multicultural motley of outcasts they pick up on the dusty trail. Critics have described it as more poetry than drama, and some have called it a masterpiece beyond question.

The venue adds its own layer to the evening. The Egyptian Theatre on Capitol Hill was built in 1880 as a Masonic Temple and has been home to the Seattle International Film Festival since the early 1980s. The founders gave the room its signature Egyptian décor, so you're watching a mid-century western inside a theater that looks like it belongs in another era entirely.

Wagon Master screens at SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 801 E Pine Street in Capitol Hill, on Monday, October 19, at 7 PM.