200 LAST OF THE MOHICANS, THE
with a critical perspective on Stalinist influence on the International Brigades. A
departure from Orwell’s book, which the film other wise closely follows, has Carr
temporarily joining the communists against POUM and the anarchists during the
street fighting in Barcelona and then regretting his apostasy in order to dramatize
the Stalinist betrayal of true revolutionary ideals. But what Orwell, Jim Allen,
and Ken Loach see as totalitarian treachery that foiled hopes for a truly egalitarian
society, Dunlop sees as a pragmatic closing of the ranks against a power ful fascist
enemy. In Dunlop’s view, “The Government with the support of the Communists
[was] determined to create a unified command. This was opposed by the Anar-
chists and the POUM” (Dunlop, n.d.). The two views remain irreconcilable.Last of the Mohicans, The (1992)
Synopsis
The Last of the Mohicans is an American war epic mostly based on George B. Seitz’s
1936 film adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s eponymous 1826 novel. Directed,
co- produced, and co- written by Michael Mann, the film stars Daniel Day- Lewis,
Madeleine Stowe, Jodhi May, Russell Means, and Wes Studi and follows the fate of
a group of British American colonials during the French and Indian War (1757).Background
James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), the second of his
Leatherstocking Tales, was an improbable and turgidly written frontier adventure
set in the Adirondacks during the second year of the French and Indian War (1757)
that nonetheless proved to be Cooper’s most popu lar and iconic work. Indeed, The
Last of the Mohicans defined the image of the early American settler and Native
American in the popu lar imagination and spawned no fewer than nine film adap-
tations, four TV versions, a radio version, an opera version, and three comics ver-
sions in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The best of these renditions is director
Michael Mann’s 1992 film version, a movie with an exceptionally long gestation
period of 40 years. When Mann was a preschooler in Chicago c.1949, he saw the
1936 film version of Last of the Mohicans starring Randolph Scott as Hawkeye—an
experience that sparked a lifelong interest in the saga. After making five feature
films in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly neo- noir, Mann acquired the rights to Philip
Dunne’s 1936 Last of the Mohicans script in 1990, easily won funding approval from
20th Century- Fox, and then undertook a new adaptation, co- written with Cristo-
pher Crowe, using Dunne’s script as their template, not Cooper’s novel. Mann cast
Daniel Day- Lewis (who had just won an Oscar for My Left Foot) in the lead role as
Hawkeye and then sent him to U.S. Army Col. David Webster, an officer at Fort
Bragg who taught pi lots wilderness survival skills. Webster took Day- Lewis to Many
Hawks Special Operations Center in Pittsview, Alabama, and had him work with
wilderness expert Mark A. Baker, who put him through a rigorous training program
in marksmanship, hunting, trapping, and all the other proficiencies involved in liv-
ing off the land— a skill set that Hawkeye would have had. Being the consummate