The Last of the Mohicans

Randolph Scott stars as Hawkeye—a trapper-frontiersman roaming the wilds of the New World during the French and Indian wars—in filmmaker George B. Seitz's 1936 version of James Fenimore Cooper's adventure classic. Hawkeye travels with Chingachgook (Robert Barrat), the last chief of the Mohican tribe, and Uncas (Phillip Reed), Chingachgook's son, and initially refuses to join the conflict against the French but does become involved when he rescues a British officer and two British women from an ambush. Philip Dunne's screenplay takes some liberties with the novel, notably adding a romance between Hawkeye and Alice (Binnie Barnes), the daughter of a British colonel fighting on the frontier (Michael Mann credits this script as a source for his 1992 adaptation with Daniel Day-Lewis), which overshadows the relationship between Uncas and Cora, Alice's younger sister, as portrayed in Cooper's story (and the 1920 silent version). Scott is a strong-willed but civilized Hawkeye, and some impressive outdoor footage mixed in amidst stage-bound scenes in studio forests adds to the effectiveness. Clearly a product of its era (white actors play the Native Americans), this version nevertheless offers a dignified presentation of the tribes, and—for all the nation-building patriotism at the end—an interesting take on a particular time and place. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)