For my money, probably the best film - or at least the most purely cinematic film - director Ford ever made. The dialog is swift, clipped, to the point.l The story starts at the very beginning and only ends with the final credits. Ford uses a relatively small cast, but directs them and photographs them with a verve and a sweep of epic proportions. Grimly realistic, warmly amusing, brilliantly acted (hard to believe Johnsonj couldn't become a leading man after this), with the best photography and editing in any American black-and-white film. Owes an awful lot to Sergei Eisenstein's editing technique, but never as coolly detached or 'scientific' as Eisenstein could frequently get. And a great musical score. A magnificent panorama of an important and poorly understood episode in American history.<br /><br />One little quibble: it's not clear why the film involves the Mormons, who, as far as I know, were never the pacifists the Quakers and Amish were. This confusion leaves a slightly bitter after-taste.<br /><br />However, the rest of the film is such a feast, this is easy to ignore. In all other ways, a true masterpiece of American cinema that needs to be revived and looked at again (and again and again).