The Last of the Mohicans (1920)

NOTE: I'm only going to give general impressions of this one.  The transfer I saw was terrible.  Almost turned it off bad.  Westlake Entertainment is responsible for it.  The starting print may have been bad, but there are points when half the frame is not even on the screen. Ugly.

Directed by Maurice Tourneur
Starring Theodore Lorch, Harry Lorraine, Nelson McDowell
Produced by Maurice Tourneur Productions

The Last of the Mohicans is a film adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's novel.  The story focuses on a love story between an Indian warrior and a British commander's daughter set against the backdrop of battle and betrayal at Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War.

Noble Mohican Uncas and his father attempt to warn the British of the impending attack by the French and Huron tribe.  Cora and Alice Munro head to Fort Henry to meet their father, but are betrayed by their Huron guide, Magua.  Fortunately, the Mohicans and their friend Hawkeye happen upon the women and attempt to lead them to the fort.  What follows is a series of adventures with the Munros taken captive and the Mohicans mounting a rescue, ultimately leading to a showdown between Uncas and Magua as Cora's life hangs in the balance.

I previously saw Tourneur's The Blue Bird (1918), one of my favorite films of the previous decade.  And I love Michael Mann's 1992 adaptation with Daniel Day Lewis (yes, it is flawed, but the soundtrack and the ending chase remain amongst my favorites in cinema).  So, needless to say I was excited for this one.

What a disappointment.

Little of Tourneur's visual inventiveness from The Blue Bird is here.  It's a fairly straightforward telling of the story.  It is very different from the 1992 version with the central romance here being an interracial one as opposed to the modern tale's focus on Hawkeye.  It's well-edited and appears to be well shot, but it's pedestrian compared to the director's previous work.

The acting in this is just bad.  Barbara Bedford as Cora has no reaction to anything.  She is just blank throughout.  No emotion at all.  And that is critical because you have to buy that three different characters would be fighting for her.

A lot of the rest of the movie is hard to judge.  The print was bad enough that in medium and long shots you could not differentiate the characters.  All of the British characters looked exactly the same in their scenes.  That made it tough to follow.  Here's a sample shot:

or

Try reading that

I am not going to do a formal star review of this one because of the viewing issues.  My impressions of it were not good, but it seems unfair to judge based on the transfer I saw.

Watched on Netflix DVD