Perhaps the best rendering of the Cooper Classic

Big Bear Lake, Big Bear Valley, San Bernardino National Forest, California, USA

Randolph Scott, Binnie Barnes, and Henry Wilcoxon in The Last of the Mohicans (1936)

John Barrymore and Nita Naldi in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)

Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro (1920)

Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess in Way Down East (1920)

Claire Adams and Lon Chaney in The Penalty (1920)

Lon Chaney and Priscilla Dean in Outside the Law (1920)

Ramon Novarro in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)

F.W. Murnau, Lil Dagover, Emil Jannings, and Julius Kupfer-Sachs in Tartuffe (1925)

The palefaces are our friends. Go into the fort yonder and tell them of the danger that threatens.

Wallace Beery and Barbara Bedford in The Last of the Mohicans (1920)

Lillian Hall in The Last of the Mohicans (1920)

Sydney Deane in The Last of the Mohicans (1920)

Barbara Bedford and George Hackathorne in The Last of the Mohicans (1920)

Barbara Bedford in The Last of the Mohicans (1920)

James Gordon in The Last of the Mohicans (1920)

Wallace Beery

Barbara Bedford

Alan Roscoe

James Fenimore Cooper

Robert Dillon

In the midst of the French and Indian War, the eldest daughter of a British officer develops an attraction towards an Indian ally who is the last living warrior of his tribe, the Mohicans.

Clarence Brown

Maurice Tourneur

The Last of the Mohicans

Film stays ahead of its time by remaining faithful to source

I just saw &quot;Last of the Mohicans.&quot; I didn&apos;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&apos;s problem was execution; he didn&apos;t understand how severely his story was compromised by unnecessary characters, needless plot devices, and ceaseless talk. Latter day film-makers steered around Cooper&apos;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&apos;t yap on the way they do in Cooper&apos;s fiction. Hawkeye&apos;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&apos;s core, between British colonial Cora Munro and Mohican hunk Uncas. He thereby rescues the film from becoming another &quot;Birth of a Nation&quot; with Wallace Beery&apos;s Magua standing in for Griffith&apos;s black-faced white men who try to rape white women.

Tourneur&apos;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&apos;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&apos; exaggerated facial expressions and theatrical gestures, which is perhaps why there are so many title cards explaining the actors&apos; motivations. Barbara Bedford is restrained and natural as Cora, some might argue too restrained to be the passionate, dark-haired heroine of Cooper&apos;s novel. But Tourneur lets Bedford&apos;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&apos;s protégé Clarence Brown, who finished this film when Tourneur was injured, guided Garbo&apos;s early career beginning with &quot;Flesh and the Devil&quot; in 1926.

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.

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