How unjust that a film which should have established its director as one of the most substantial then working has been lost for the better part of a hundred years. This one slots in between THE COVERED WAGON, which starred Wilson, and the Gary Cooper THE VIRGINIAN, directed by Fleming, pointing the Paramount westerns (think UNION PACIFIC, California, the Alan Ladd WHISPERING SMITH and SHANE) as one of the movies' great cycles.
Richard Dix is totally in his element as the Rough Rider come back to his home valley to find the blood feud (not the Hatfields and McCoys this time) which he is reluctantly drawn into. The notion that the confrontation will continue to the last man is a great, sober plot dynamic.
Parallel with the exceptional cowboy action material, we get the romance with Wilson, who's "good name" as the only woman in the bad hats' camp, is a surprise plot device. The kiss on the mountain peak with the western landscape spread out below the leads is an iconic image copied many time over but never equaled. The film's avalanche is also the most imposing thing of it's kind.
It is full of the unexpected - normally jolly Palette as a nasty, the "frightful" bad man who is the prototype of Shane, the shoot-out interrupted by the widow with the shovel who won't leave her man's body to be picked over by the critters.
TO THE LAST MAN is a succession of great cowboy movie scenes rendered in marvelous images, which had no need for sound. The quite presentable Randolph Scott-Henry Hathaway re-make is obliterated in the comparison.
I thought it was the best film run at the 2015 Pordenone event and I found a surprisingly large number of people who shared that opinion.
Richard Dix is totally in his element as the Rough Rider come back to his home valley to find the blood feud (not the Hatfields and McCoys this time) which he is reluctantly drawn into. The notion that the confrontation will continue to the last man is a great, sober plot dynamic.
Parallel with the exceptional cowboy action material, we get the romance with Wilson, who's "good name" as the only woman in the bad hats' camp, is a surprise plot device. The kiss on the mountain peak with the western landscape spread out below the leads is an iconic image copied many time over but never equaled. The film's avalanche is also the most imposing thing of it's kind.
It is full of the unexpected - normally jolly Palette as a nasty, the "frightful" bad man who is the prototype of Shane, the shoot-out interrupted by the widow with the shovel who won't leave her man's body to be picked over by the critters.
TO THE LAST MAN is a succession of great cowboy movie scenes rendered in marvelous images, which had no need for sound. The quite presentable Randolph Scott-Henry Hathaway re-make is obliterated in the comparison.
I thought it was the best film run at the 2015 Pordenone event and I found a surprisingly large number of people who shared that opinion.
