The Last of the Mohicans. 1920. Directed by Maurice Tourneur.

(2/3/00)

My eyes were really hurting me so it was hard to appreciate this film. I was having trouble figuring out all the characters and what was going on at the beginning, but later I settled into it and enjoyed it very much.

I didn't like Barbara Bedford so much at the beginning. She seemed pretty vapid and lifeless. Later on I thought she was quite wondreful. She really dominated the film from the standpoint of character. The most moving scene for me is when she offers to go with Magus in place of her sister.

The film has a pictorial beauty which would have been enhanced bya really good print. There is, for example, quite a fine use of silhouette. It is also quite a violent film. I particularly remember when the drunken Indians attack the settlers and one grabs a baby away from its mother and just flings it into the distance. It doesn't have closeups of blood in lurid color, but in its own way it is a violent film. I remember, too, the scene in which an Indian forces his way into one of the wagons, presumably to attack a woman and approaches the camera until the screen is filled with a closeup of his menacing eyes.

It is obviously a film about racism, but maybe it's a racist film itself in that the Indians are presented as either saints or savages.

I found that I enjoyed this film more as it went along. It is a well-made, well-acted, exciting tale.