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.

The Poor Little Rich Girl. 1917. Directed by Maurice Tourneur.

(10/30/99)

Fantastic movie. This was one of Mary Pickford's most successful vehicles and it hold up just fine after 87 years. She was superb, she was lovely.

It has some really nice special effects. I was really touched by the scene where the father is thinking about shooting himself (shown through superimposition) and his daughter comes into the study. The last part of the film is dominated by an elaborate hallucination that the drugged daughter is having. The film cuts back and forth between reality and her delirium. I had trouble following it for a whil;e--which could just have been that my eyes hurt and I didn't feel well--but it comes to a fantastic climax in which she has to choose between life and death. It's a great moment.

The nasty servants were sharp caricatures and the film had nicely illustrated intertitles. Some people might think it was corny, but I found its message valid and well-put.

That hallucination in which Pickford finally has to choose between life and death reminded me very much of A Matter of Life and Death and, to a lesser extent, The Blood of Jesus.