Shortly into production of The Last of the Mohicans, Maurice Tourneur suffered an injury
leaving his assistant Clarence Brown to complete the film. Brown, a one-time car
salesman, had decided the Frenchman was the best director in Hollywood and in
1915 had approached him directly to teach him everything he knew as a
replacement for the assistant he had just fired… By 1920 Brown was Tourneur’s
right hand and he later told Kevin Brownlow that it was like receiving an Oscar
when the master commented on the finished film: “not bad, Mr Brown, not bad…”
On such relationships are great films made and Kevin
Brownlow, introducing this screening of his own copy, recalled having to call
in a favour from Henri Langlois in order to screen the same to Clarence Brown
in the 60s, the latter pointing out every scene that should have been tinted so
emphatically that Kevin had to be reminded by the Bioscopes projectionist, the
mighty Dave Locke, that the copy if black and white.
It mattered not as the screen comes alive when Brown and
Tourneur’s vision is projected. Apparently, Maurice was none too keen on
location shooting and so Clarence had already plenty of experience which shows
in the action on top and against huge mountain-scapes as well as the impressive
and disturbingly blood-thirsty battles scenes. This is one aspect I was not
expecting and the large-scale attacks on women and children by the rogue native
American tribesmen is unsettling to say the least.
But this is not your usual story of cowboys and Indians…
no matter how demonised the Huron tribe is we also have “good Indians” in the
form of the diminished Mohican tribe not to mention inter-racial love that is
remarkable for the time and the novel even has the extra twist of Cora Munro
being mixed race. The book was the second of five James Fenimore Cooper wrote
in the mid-nineteenth century about the battle for supremacy between the
British, the French and the native Americans and was set in 1757, during the
Seven Years' War with the French army aligned with the Huron tribe in a losing
battle against British dominance (but don’t worry America, 1776 is just around
the corner).
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| Barbara Bedford and Alan Roscoe |
Cora (Barbara Bedford) and Alice Munro (Lillian Hall) are
the daughters of British Colonel Munro (James Gordon) who commands Fort William
Henry, south of Lake George in the colony of New York. The French are planning
and attack and Uncas (Alan Roscoe) – the last Mohican warrior – is sent by his
father Chingachgook (Theodore Lorch) to warn the Brits… Cora is immediately
taken with the handsome fellow and her useless compatriot Captain Randolph
(George Hackathorne) looks on jealously.
Wallace Beery, perhaps surprisingly, plays an Indian
scout Magua who, of course, has a treacherous heart and is secretly going to
lead the Munro girls into the hands of his pals in the Huron tribe… all the
better to get his way with Cora. It’s not just Wallace and Alan in black-face
though, there’s not a single native American in the film and as Brown quipped
to Brownlow, there’s one called Murphy. Obviously, Daniel Day-Lewis wasn’t yet
available… although Boris Karloff was, playing an, uncredited, native.
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| Wallace Beery who's actual wife is just below in the feathers... |
Mohicans is a
classic adventure story and the film does it justice with exceptional
performances from Bedford, Roscoe and Beery – he’s just so good at being bad.
Brown makes light of the novel’s complexities and strips the story down whilst
moving the moral issues forward. The actual events are as much a backdrop as
the scenery to the three-way tussle for Cora and she makes for a brave and
action-oriented hero herself.
Cyrus Gabrisch made himself at home in the great
outdoors, filling the valleys with mountainous chords and propelling the action
ever onwards with fleet-fingered progressions that traversed the emotions as
fluidly as Uncas scaled the sheer rock walls for his love.
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| Time's almost up lads... |
Tonight’s shorts were also from Mr Brownlow’s collection
and started off with a Biograph film, By Man’s Law (1913) which featured Mae Marsh
taking yet another unfortunate fall as a society girl the local do-gooders want
to “rescue”. The film board of Ohio apparently complained that “the rich should
not be satirised…” Oh yes, they must!
Kevin revealed the astonishing statistic that Paramount,
having made 1017 silent films, only managed to preserve 37 of them… although I’m
not sure how many were found in other archives and stores? This partly explains
why there is only one reel remaining of the fascinating A Trip to Paramount
(1922), which featured a number of well-known stars working on and promoting their
films. We had Rudolph Valentino going through his paces bullfighting in Blood
and Sand accompanied by Nita Naldi doing her own “torrid-adoring”, then Cecil B
Demille’s Manslaughter with Leatrice Joy in the splendour of the
so-far-over-the-top-they’re-back-under… Roman scenes.
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| Maximum plumage, Swanson Overdrive |
There was Wallace Reid with a mini-version of himself driving
a toy racing car and Bebe Daniels showing off a mini-Bebe dancing on the palm
of her hand and then a brief glimpse of Glorious Swanson in the now lost film Her Gilded Cage. So many we recognise
but others we couldn’t as their films have gone…
Meg Morley accompanied with trademark assurance and
captured the confident mood of these untouchables from the era of peak-cinema,
masters of mood who confidently led our hearts astray for fleeting minutes as
we sat watching in the dark.
Another splendid night in the museum… thanks Bioscopers
and to the Cinema Museum staff and volunteers.
For updates on the campaign to save the Cinema Museum
please check out the website and, if you haven’t already done so, please sign
the petition to save this precious and irreplaceable community resource!
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