The Last of the Mohicans

I love this film. In fact, I find it closer to the novel (written by James Fenimore Cooper) than the 1936 film starring Randolph Scott. Although filmed during the silent era, I find it more "true to form" than the latter film. Wallace Beery is wonderful as "Hawkeye". Unfortunately, nether this nor the 1936 film come close to Michael Mann's thrilling 1992 film. An epic film, It is 1 of my favorite films ever made by Michael Mann. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis as "Hawkeye", with Madeleine Stowe as "Cora Munroe", Jodi May as her sister "Alice Munroe". For me, the best of all casting is the inclusion of 2 very famous Native Americans: Russel Means (as "Chingachgook") and Dennis Banks (as "Ongewasgone"). In fact, Dennis Banks was a co-founder of the American Indian Movement ("AIM"). He was 1 of the leaders of AIM's takeover of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1973. It was a protest against both tribal and U.S. Governments. He was arrested by the FBI. Michael Mann was thrilled when both men accepted his offer to be cast in his (1992) version of this film, which is by far the very best.

Maurice Tourneur and Clarence Brown co-directed this version James Fenimore Cooper's classic tale of the American primeval forest, The Last Of The Mohicans. In it we have an opportunity to see Wallace Beery get first billing in a film, possibly for the first time as the villainous Magua.

Steeped in the tales of the French and Indian War growing up in the forest region of Upstate New York, Cooper knew his subject and his region well and created some unforgettable literary characters. He was also influenced by Rousseau's ideas of the 'noble savage' who the white man with his civilization had destroyed and continues to destroy. The American Indian was the perfect example for that theory.

Cooper also knew that the Indians, the Hurons here were in the pay of the French. The British too had their allies, the Iroquois Confederation were allied with them. In the end they all got used and abandoned.

As bad as Magua is it's also clear he's in the pay of one faction of the white man which is how I'm sure the Indians saw it back in the day. The noble savage is Uncas played here by Alan Roscoe, a truly magnificent tragic figure who is brought down by his love for one of the Munro sisters.

The Munro sisters Cora and Alice played by Barbara Bedford and Lillian Hall respectively are the daughters of Colonel in charge of Fort William Henry in the Adirondacks. Outnumbered and outgunned the British agree to a surrender to the French, but the Indians all liquored up go hog wild and start killing. Magua who had the Munro Sisters captive before has a thing for Alice who has fallen for Uncas.

Given the title you know it all is going to end badly for a lot of the cast members. That's all I can really say.

This version of The Last Of The Mohicans was filmed at Big Bear Lake and Yosemite National Park to create the primeval forest. Actually that area between the Hudson River and the Massachusetts/Vermont border is still pretty primeval. The cinematography is really outstanding, the best thing about this film.

This silent film after 90 years holds up very well as does Cooper's novel which is an immortal classic.

I just saw "Last of the Mohicans." I didn't expect much. I had seen other adaptations: the 1936 George B. Seitz movie and the Michael Mann remake of 1992. To me they all seem to lack the spirit of what is admittedly a rambling novel whose provocative subject matter is only partially realized. Cooper's problem was execution; he didn't understand how severely his story was compromised by unnecessary characters, needless plot devices, and ceaseless talk. Latter day film-makers steered around Cooper's problem by ignoring him and creating a story of their own, but in doing so they lost what was fine in his work.

Director Maurice Tourneur does not ignore Cooper, although he does cut through the crap. In a non-talking film the characters can't yap on the way they do in Cooper's fiction. Hawkeye's role is reduced. He has few scenes and is not the romantic lead Randolph Scott and Daniel Day Lewis would be in later adaptations. He is the homely, awkward, asexual woodsman Cooper describes. Tourneur chooses, rather, to focus directly on the tragic romance at the novel's core, between British colonial Cora Munro and Mohican hunk Uncas. He thereby rescues the film from becoming another "Birth of a Nation" with Wallace Beery's Magua standing in for Griffith's black-faced white men who try to rape white women.

Tourneur's technique is impressive. Camera perspective, lighting, and editing are well in advance of what was being done in 1920. The action on the Eastman print I saw seems a little fast. I'm not sure if it runs at the correct projection speed. Tourneur obviously under-cranked his camera during action sequences to give actors and extras the appearance of furious motion. These are only small criticisms, however.

As in all his films Tourneur reined in the actors' exaggerated facial expressions and theatrical gestures, which is perhaps why there are so many title cards explaining the actors' motivations. Barbara Bedford is restrained and natural as Cora, some might argue too restrained to be the passionate, dark-haired heroine of Cooper's novel. But Tourneur lets Bedford's quiet beauty act as a veneer masking a volatile nature. Her defiance of social and feminine conventions – showing attraction for a Native warrior, and impulsively sacrificing herself to protect her sister in the Indian town – affects us all the more because of her stillness. In Garbo such stillness was praised as mystique. So perhaps it is no coincidence that Tourneur's protégé Clarence Brown, who finished this film when Tourneur was injured, guided Garbo's early career beginning with "Flesh and the Devil" in 1926.

Keeping the story-line close to that of the original novel, this is perhaps the best telling of the Cooper classic. Great photography, and what for the time, must have been considered "under-acting" maintain a timelessness to this version. It is interesting to see a somewhat slim Wallace Beery as the villain Magua. While the 1936 Randolph Scott version is good, this one is the best, much more so than the Daniel Day Lewis atrocity produced in the 90s!!!

This is truly a magnificent film. It goes way beyond nostalgia in its appeal - it is a sublime work of art. Maurice Tourneur, one of the most neglected geniuses of cinema, directed most of it but, after being injured on set, he gave the great Clarence Brown his first directing assignment. And it's easy to see where Brown learnt a lot of the visual stylings that he became so famous for. This film, in a gorgeously restored print with colour tints, is a visual treat - with its revolutionary use of shadows, changes of light, actors moving into the camera, extreme long shots and even a tracking shot. The camera was still pretty immobile in 1920, but through quick edits and superb shot composition, Tourneur creates a sense of movement.

But you'll forget all the technical brilliance once the emotion of the story grabs you - and that will be in the massacre scene, which is one of the most horrifying sequences I have ever seen. And the film's finale on a cliff-top is awesome. Excellent performances from the 17 year old Barbara Bedford, in her film debut, and Alan (then Albert) Roscoe - as the inter-racial lovers. They create an eroticism together that'll have you panting - it's not surprising that the pair later married in real life. And Wallace Beery is menacingly evil as the man who comes between them.

It's an astonishing picture politically too - very contemporary in its treatment of racial issues. The Native Americans, the English and the French are all portrayed as both good and bad - the massacre being blamed primarily on the French giving the Native Americans alcohol. And the inter-racial love is respected by the film-makers and most of the characters.

Don't miss this one - it deserves a place with the great achievements of cinema.