I've just watched this film, and want to write a review, but don't know what to say, yet!!!!!!!!!!!!!John Ford and John Wayne, a recipe for success, and was it ?, yes it was.Read no further if you don't want to know more details about this film.With around 15 to 20 minutes of this film until the end, if you aren't on the edge of your seat, and crying your heart out, you ain't human.John Wayne is left in charge of a baby, he stumbles and falls after a trek through the desert with his bank robber friends, who die from thirst on the way with him, he reads from a bible then throws it away. Wayne should have got an Oscar for these scenes.As John Wayne stumbles, her carries the little baby in his arms because he made a promise to the baby's dying mother.Then John Wayne comes to a town, places the baby wrapped in clothing on the bar.Its a great and very human film people, watch it, and be prepared to cryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

(7.5/10) Hidden gem in the Wayne/Ford canon. Good story of retelling the biblical Three Wise Men in a western setting, although it would have been more effective if they were more subtle presenting it. Cast was great including Harry Carey in his debut in the film dedicated to the life of his late father who starred in the original film this movie is based on. Ford uses scenery brilliant as always, but puts it in a new, unique role as the films' main antagonist. On the downside, I found the ending to be a little bit of a letdown. Highlight of the film is watching the three stars first cope with trying to take care of Robert William Pedro.

John Ford western with familiar ingredients, mostly entertaining returns. Three amiable bank-robbers hope to evade the law by riding (and then walking) across the parched, sand-swept Arizona desert; complicating matters is a newborn infant they adopt along the way after his mother dies post-childbirth. Screenplay by Laurence Stallings and Frank S. Nugent, from a well-trodden story by Peter B. Kyne, is slanted towards religious parable, which probably made the film a cinch to advertise to 1948 audiences but today feels half-baked. John Wayne gets a windy monologue in the second act that doesn't come off too well, but he's in good spirits and ably shares the screen with cohorts Pedro Armendariz and Harry Carey Jr. Even better is Ward Bond as the Arizona sheriff (named 'Perley') who is slyly introduced to us working in his garden before putting on his badge (the best-directed sequence in the whole picture). Outstanding cinematography by Winton Hoch, some wonderful sequences (including the finale), though the editing flags in the midsection, prolonging the obvious. A solid entry for genre buffs and Wayne-addicts, though not the best film from he and John Ford. Other versions include "The Three Godfathers" from 1916 (starring Harry Carey, to whom this version is dedicated) and John Ford's own "Marked Men" in 1919, which also starred Carey. **1/2 from ****

Nice to watch this hoary old (Christmas) chestnut at Yuletide, almost exactly 60 years after its original release. And yes, while it is guilty of a number of sins by way of corniness, improbability and sentimentality, it still works for me and proves you don't need tinsel and snow to evoke the Christmas spirit. Here old Papa Ford relates his Christmas parable against the background of the searing heat of the Arizona desert as Duke Wayne struggles against the odds to deliver orphan child Robert William Pedro to safety, bang on, wouldn't you know it, Christmas Day. All the usual Ford staples are here, the panoramic scenery, male camaraderie, bawdy humour and of course big John Wayne himself in yet another barnstorming lead role. I'm not the biggest Wayne fan going, but Ford invariably got the best out of the big lunk and he certainly carries the film (and the baby!) manfully. His two confederates, the youthful Harry Carey Jr and TexMex Pedro Armendariz both of whom sadly expire along the way, offer effective and humorous counterpoint to big John's proselytising. Ford cleverly doesn't reveal his hand too quickly with only the odd Biblical reference alluded to early on but by the time the three amigos are spotlit gazing out at the camera having just accepted the dying mother's infant child into their care, it piles on from there. Along the way the humour and sentimentality are mixed up lightly with a little (not too much) dramatic tension as Wayne completes his epic journey (like he was ever going to fail!), spurred on by the ghosts of his fallen colleagues and completes his own spiritual regeneration in accepting with good grace his jail sentence at the end in exchange for a guarantee that he'll be reunited with his infant charge once his sentence is complete. Noting that the film is Ford's own remake of his earlier silent movie production of the same story would help explain why some of the scenes are somewhat static and staged tableau-style. Wayne gets to walk more than he talks, no bad thing, and the rest of the cast are all at home under the director's loving eye. All told, then a colourful (check the blue filter shot Ford employs to evoke the desert at night) and festive treat. But surely this child wasn't the Son of God...?!