General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Last of the Mohicans (1920 film)

The Last of the Mohicans is a 1920 American silent adventure film directed by Maurice Tourneur and Clarence Brown, the first feature-length adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757¹. Set during the French and Indian War, the North American branch of the Seven Years War, it stars Harry Lorraine as the scout Hawkeye and Wallace Beery as the Huron villain Magua¹.

Key fact	Detail
Release	21 November 1920; six reels, black and white, silent; copyright registered 16 November 1920 by Maurice Tourneur (LP15837)²
Direction	Maurice Tourneur and Clarence L. Brown; Brown, Tourneur's assistant, took over when Tourneur was injured during shooting²
Principal cast	Wallace Beery (Magua), Barbara Bedford (Cora Munro), Albert Roscoe (Uncas), Lillian Hall (Alice), Harry Lorraine (Hawkeye), James Gordon (Colonel Munro)²
Key change from the novel	Chingachgook is renamed Great Serpent, apparently because filmmakers judged the original name too much of a mouthful¹
Screenplay and crew	Robert A. Dillon; cinematography by Philip R. Du Bois and Charles Van Enger; art direction by Floyd Mueller; music by Arthur Kay²
Locations	Shot near Big Bear Lake and in Yosemite Valley, with panchromatic filmstock used for exterior photography³
Survival	A print exists in the George Eastman Museum archive; the film is in the public domain in the United States³

Spoilers

Story and adaptation choices

The plot follows Cooper's novel in outline. During the French and Indian War, Cora Munro and her younger sister Alice travel toward Fort Henry, where their father Colonel Munro's garrison is besieged by Indians allied with the French. Magua, a Huron cast out from his tribe who is guiding the women, seizes them instead, and the rescue falls to Uncas, the last living Mohican warrior, his father, and the white scout Hawkeye²^•¹.

Two changes stand out. Hawkeye keeps his name, but Chingachgook, the novel's other main character, becomes Great Serpent in the film¹. Robert A. Dillon's screenplay also makes Magua's evil the central driving force of the story, balanced by Uncas as a good and true Mohican brave; the film centers the interracial triangle of Cora, Uncas, and Magua, none of whom survive at the end, in line with the Hollywood rule that even a hint of miscegenation required punishment on screen¹.

Production

The film was Maurice Tourneur's first for Associated Producers, and he also produced and presented it². Tourneur, a French-born director who had come to the United States in 1914 and built a reputation as a great pictorialist, was the original director, but his assistant Clarence Brown stepped in when Tourneur was injured during production¹^•². According to the film historian Michal Peprník, Barker and Sabin hold that the film is mainly Brown's work, because Tourneur was confined to bed and could join the production only in its last stages⁴.

The exteriors were shot near Big Bear Lake and in Yosemite Valley, and cinematographer Charles van Enger used panchromatic filmstock for the outdoor photography³. According to modern sources, Boris Karloff had a small role as a marauding Indian; a pre-production news item had named Omar Whitehead to play Hawkeye, a part that went to Harry Lorraine².

Reception and style

Critics received the film warmly in 1920; Motion Picture News called it "the greatest Indian picture ever shown"¹. David Sterritt, writing for Turner Classic Movies, judges its most successful qualities cinematic rather than historical or psychological: the images are beautifully framed, crisply photographed, and gracefully edited, with strong performances from Barbara Bedford and Lillian Hall as Cora and Alice¹. A later reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes calls the climactic scene on top of the cliff astonishing even by 21st-century standards⁵.

The film's treatment of Native Americans carries the assumptions of its period. The most dramatic Indian character, Magua, is played by Beery, an actor Sterritt describes as highly un-Indian-like and covered in makeup, and the portrayal of Uncas leans on the "noble savage" stereotype¹. A survey of Hollywood's Native Americans notes that Tourneur's film portrayed the Mohicans as the noble remnants of a "dying race" and set the peaceful nobility of Uncas against the unbridled savagery of Magua⁶.

Place in the adaptation history

Cooper's story had reached the screen before 1920, with short films appearing as early as 1911, and further versions followed¹. The 1936 United Artists version directed by George B. Seitz, with Randolph Scott as Hawkeye, shifted the emphasis to the triangle of Hawkeye, Alice, and Heyward, and Michael Mann's 1992 film pairs Hawkeye with Cora as a romantic couple¹. Among these American adaptations, the 1920 silent is judged the most faithful to Cooper's novel⁵, and the Library of America essay on Mann's film calls it the most faithful screen adaptation of Cooper and, next to Mann's, the most artful and compelling⁷. Sterritt concludes that for pure visual storytelling and a memorably filmed climax, the Tourneur and Brown silent has proven hard to beat¹.

The film remains accessible: a 35mm positive print is held by the George Eastman Museum, the film is in the American public domain, and restored editions of about 72 to 73 minutes circulate on home video and streaming platforms³^•⁸.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026