“A Cowboy has to Sing”

In About John Ford, Lindsay Anderson comments of Wagon Master (1950):

Absence of plot does not mean lack of incident or character: Wagonmaster is acted by a number of Ford’s most likable players, and there are a succession of encounters, cheerful, sinister or strange, as the Mormon pilgrims push on to their promised land. But once again, it is the feeling which gives importance to the action; and the feeling for these pioneers, for their courage and good faith, is all admiration and love. ¹