Pretty Good

hyped garbage

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The year is 1757 during the French & Indian War in the New World. The British fort of Fort Edward is being targeted by the French & their Native American allies the Hurons. Captain Randolph, a cowardly British officer decides to defect to the French after discovering that the fort is fitted with weapons that are basically useless & after his girlfriend Cora Munro, the eldest daughter of the fort's colonel, rebuffs his advances & instead falls for Uncas, the last of the Mohican tribe. The Hurons' chief runner Magua, who also desires Cora, leads the Hurons to massacre the inhabitants of the fort & kidnaps Cora & her younger sister Alice for himself. Uncas challenges Magua to a duel for the sisters' freedom.This 1920 silent film was the first of four adaptations of the novel by Fenimore Cooper & by far the best of the bunch. It is also the most faithful of the adaptations & correctly depicts the nasty side of the war at the time. The film was originally directed by Maurice Tourneur but when he became too ill to continue, Clarence Brown stepped in to finish the production.The film, like most other silent features of the era, is filled with pioneering shots, although it is still technically crude in some respects (this was 1920, after all – the cinema was still in its infancy at the time). The film is a bit stagy in some parts but there are no superfluous shots to be found. The acting is good & the film is reasonably exciting. The film is also watchable for the fact that it correctly depicts the New World (later to become the USA) as filled with good Indians, bad Indians, bigoted whites, romance between white women & Indians & the simple message that war is indeed a form of hell.

While the first half of the "The Last of the Mohicans" is rather run of the mill, the second half, beginning with the attack of the mass of drunken Indians against the British and French soldiers and civilians, is nothing less than astonishing. The explicit scenes of violence are some of the most spectacular ever filmed in black and white. There is no romanticization of war here. A baby is ripped from its mother's arms, and tossed high in the air to its presumed death. Wounded soldiers are attacked, tortured and massacred. Incredibly sickening, and it really draws you in.The most horrifying part of the battle is how long it goes on for. We are too trained in old films to expect the cavalry, or some other hero, to arrive before it is too late, before too many have lost their lives. Not here. The bloodbath goes on and on, men, women and children being hacked to death, and we finally realize, there IS NO cavalry to save them. The scenes of piles of corpses are amazing and captivating; I can't remember seeing anything quite like it in early cinema.The massacre scenes by themselves are enough to make this film memorable, but there is more: an incredible series of outdoor long-shots of a nightmarishly high cliff, with the tiny figures of the heroine and bad-guy Indian Wallace Beery on top, struggling, fighting, terrifyingly near the edge. This kind of scene, when done right, like it is here, always feels more dramatic in a silent picture, then it is with sound. The fight between Beery's Magua and the good Indian Uncas, quick as it is, also has an epic feel, taking place over a quick series of spectacular and varying landscape shots, down immense hills and titanic waterfalls. Remarkable indeed.A long forgotten actress, Barbara Bedford, plays the older dark-haired sister. She is actually quite beautiful, and the eye is drawn to her whenever she is on screen. Interestingly, IMDb credits her with over 200 movie roles, but once sound arrived, almost all of her remaining 100 roles were uncredited and/or in short subjects. Long forgotten.The movie suggests that quite a substantial number of civilians, including an surprising number of women, lived with the British soldiers in the colonies. I wonder if that is accurate. "Last of the Mohicans" really drives home how absolutely miserable it must have been to be living in the primitive forests of North America, at the whims of staggeringly extreme weather conditions, never mind the dangers posed by the Natives, thousands of miles from the comfortable, civilized, mild conditions of Britain. Interesting. And do the officers really never remove their white wigs, even in death?A highly recommended piece of cinema history, primarily for the historic battle scenes of the second half.

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.

Michael Mann claims that this film, rather than the novel it was based on, was the central influence on his version of the "The Last of the Mohicans" (1992).Filmed in 1920 and directed by Clarence Brown and Maurice Tourneur, this silent film is admittedly very dated. There's no sound, the images are at times washed out (due to poor restoration work?) and the portrayal of the Native American Indians quite racist.But on a purely visual level, this film is extraordinary, especially the action sequences, which are all virtually replicated by Mann in his remake. The epic showdowns on the mountain cliffs, the waterfalls, the suicidal leaps, the columns of troops being ambushed in the forest, the battles at the fort, those muscular action poses struck by the Indians...they're all here and one can see why Mann cites this film as a favourite. It's an incredibly visual film, packed with action and bodice ripping romance.7.5/10 - I can't see this film appealing to modern audiences. Me, I like it for its raw violence, its huge sets and for the comparisons it offers with Mann's remake.