by Allan Fish
(USA 1920 71m) DVD1
The curse of the red men
p Maurice Tourneur d Maurice Tourneur, Clarence Brown (uncredited) w Robert Dillon novel James Fenimore Cooper ph Philippe R.DuBois, Charles Van Enger m R.J.Miller (1993 reissue) art Fluyd Mueller, Ben Carré cos Ben Carré
Wallace Beery (Magua), Harry Lorraine (Hawkeye), Barbara Bedford (Cora Munro), Alan Roscoe (Uncas), Lillian Hall (Alice Munro), Henry Woodward (Major Heyward), James Gordon (Colonel Munro), Theodore Lorch (Chingachgook), Boris Karloff (Indian),
There have been many versions of Cooper’s classic tale since the dawn of sound and yet somehow none of them come close to the power of this silent masterwork. One particularly recalls the 1936 version with Randolph Scott as Hawkeye and Bruce Cabot in another typically nasty portrayal as the villainous Magua, while I can still recall watching the Michael Mann 1992 effort in my local cinema with a sense of disbelief. Not at the film necessarily, which was serviceable enough, but in the way the plot had been put into a blender until it bore no relation to the original novel whatsoever, even killing off the wrong sister and turning said wrong’s sister’s romantic aspirations towards Hawkeye, not the noble Uncas. For all its old school captions of ‘dark hair’, ‘yellow hair’ and ‘red men’, this 1920 classic was more faithful and not half so long drawn out.
Set in 1757 at the heart of the Anglo-French Seven Years War, it follows the fates of sisters Cora and Alice Munro. They are taken from their refuge at Fort Edward to go to their father at Fort William Henry, but they are unknowingly led into a trap by the treacherous Indian scout Magua, as the young women are not aware of their father’s being under siege and the presence of a horde of Hurons, filled with firewater to hate the British. Magua sets about his evil plans and the women seem at his mercy, but they are briefly rescued by the noble Mohican Indian Uncas, who falls in love with Cora, his father Chingachgook, and trapper Hawkeye. Cora is forced to go with Magua to save her younger sister the same fate, but then Cora threatens to throw herself into a towering ravine. Can Uncas and Hawkeye rescue her in time?
Of course anyone who has read the novel will be able to answer that one, and perhaps that very downbeat ending is what makes it such a hard sell for cinema audiences to swallow, who like their adventure films to end happily and the original book be hanged. To his credit, Tourneur pulls few punches – Brown stepped in to direct for a few weeks while Tourneur recovered from an injury, but the film is very much Tourneur’s vision – and it also refuses to downplay the romance of Uncas and Cora, a romance whose miscegenation would hardly have appealed to the hard right American heartland. For a 1920 film it might be argued that it’s too static, the camera indeed not moving at all apart from one sequence, the evacuation of Fort William Henry prior to Magua’s attack. Of course, the mountainous terrain made the rails necessary for tracking and zoom shots impossible, but Tourneur displays more than adequate mastery of mise-en-scene and editing to keep his picture moving. He’s helped immeasurably by the gorgeous photography of Van Enger and DuBois, and it remains probably the first American film to rival the work of great Scandinavian DP Julius Jaenzon in capturing the vast beauty of the great outdoors. The performances, though very much old school, are perfectly in keeping, with Bedford a perfectly melancholy Cora, Roscoe a daring Uncas and an especially memorable, scenery-chewing baddie from a budding Wallace Beery, a role that set him up in a career of supporting turns as rogues that kept him through the silent era. Nowadays, Tourneur is primarily remembered as the father of fellow master Jacques Tourneur, but he remains sadly overlooked – check out his lovely 1918 version of The Blue Bird and his 1922 Lorna Doone for other examples of his craft. The gorgeous restored George Eastman House print on Region 1 DVD is now deleted and has been going for exorbitant sums on ebay and amazon marketplace, but be diligent and you’ll find a copy and I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.
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Sounds great; I’d love to see this. The 1936 version is currently on my DVR and I adore the ’92 version. I think you’re wrong to call it merely “serviceable”, though you’re hardly alone in that – at any rate, undistracted by issues of fidelity to the book (which I haven’t read), I found it one of the most stirring adventure films in ages. And the ending is one of the most masterful uses of music, montage, and movement in the history of cinema (no wonder Bordwell & Thompson highlight and deconstruct it in their textbooks).
The countdown continues, I’m enjoying your choices a great deal, avant-garde or no avant-garde!
Wes Studi is my favorite movie Magua but Beery is a strong runner up, and the way he disposes of Cora is one of the most heinous acts I’ve seen in a silent film. Thanks for reminding me of this film’s virtues; it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, back when AMC would show a silent feature on a weekday afternoon.
Yes, Wes Studi as Magua in the 1992 version is a genuine wonder–he gives the most towering performance of any character in any version of Mohicans that I’ve ever seen: like a monstrous dark image of hatred, fiendishly subtle, a god pulling the strings in an ecstatic inspiration of revenge, somehow underplaying ALMOST every inch of the way– then stupefying us (as though he’d suddenly hit us over the back of the head with a shovel) when he explodes in the action scenes. And as though that wasn’t enough, we don’t get to just hate him, we have to understand him: his wife and children were murdered, he has reason to hate. Absolutely freaking stellar. I forget if he won the Oscar, but if not, he was robbed.
This was pretty good…some fantastic stand-alone shots and interesting early work with cinematography. This was always extremely well paced and quite action-packed.
I was disappointed (though not surprised) to find this was filmed in California (same spots as the 1930’s version) and not “on location” in my favorite area of upstate New York where the story belongs.
Call me “new-fashioned” but I’ll always prefer the Michael Mann version, though lord knows it took the most liberties with Cooper’s source material. As far as I’m concerned I’m right there with Margaret. Wes Studi IS Magua, and you won’t find better Munro girls than the two there with Madeleine Stowe and Jodhi May.