The Last Frontier (1955)

Anthony Mann: The Last Frontier (US 1955) avec James Whitmore (Gus), Victor Mature (Jed Cooper) et Pat Hogan (Mungo). Photo: La Cinémathèque française.

La Charge des tuniques bleues / Viimeinen etuvartio / Utpost i vildmarken.

    Anthony Mann / États-Unis / 1955 / 98 min / 35 mm / VOSTF

    D'après le roman The Gilded Rooster de Richard Emery Roberts.

    Avec Victor Mature, Guy Madison, Robert Preston.

    Rétrospective Anthony Mann.

    La Cinémathèque française, 51 Rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris. M° Bercy Lignes 14, 6 ; Salle Henri Langlois, le 23 mars 2024.

La Cinémathèque française : " Guerre de Sécession. Détroussés par les Sioux, des trappeurs trouvent refuge au sein d'un fort de cavalerie. Avec une noirceur lyrique spectaculaire, le cinéaste exploite au maximum le potentiel du Cinémascope pour traiter des lois de la civilisation à travers le regard d'un héros rustre et sauvage. "

AA: Seen back to back after Devil's Doorway, The Last Frontier forms a pro-Indian double bill in the Anthony Mann retrospective.

Shot in CinemaScope and Technicolor in Mexico, The Last Frontier is a tale of epic grandeur about the Indian wars during the fourth year of the Civil War. Colonel Frank Marston (Robert Preston) has been assigned to a distant Cavalry outpost after his disastrous record in the battle of Shiloh where Marston sent 1500 men to their deaths. He is now eager to reclaim hero status for fighting the Sioux in the territory of Chief Red Cloud (Manuel Donde).

There is an affinity with Fort Apache, with Marston in a role like Lieutenant Colonel Thursday (Henry Fonda). Instead of a Captain York (John Wayne), there is a maverick trio of seasoned trappers, consisting of Jed Cooper (Victor Mature), Gus (James Whitmore) and Mungo (Pat Hogan).

The trio has known the Sioux for years, and now they sense a change. Because of the behaviour of the US Cavalry ("they talk with forked tongues"), the trappers are no longer welcome, either, and they have to part with their horses and weapons. They march to the outpost and get new jobs as Cavalry scouts. They do their best to prevent catastrophe but fail to do so, and in a tragic massacre Marston, among others, perishes. 

The trio talks explicitly about the divide of "civilization" and being "savage", and the more they learn about the US Cavalry, the less able they are to tell which is which.

There is a strong element of comedy and farce in the tragic war tale. It can work if you know how to do it, and John Ford arguably knew. Anthony Mann was not a great humorist or comedy director, but he did well if he had luck with the cast, as he did with James Stewart and Barbara Stanwyck. Victor Mature does his best in his role as the maverick buffoon Jed Cooper who is also the best fighter. (A Finnish parallel comes to mind: Rokka in The Unknown Soldier).

It is a time-honoured convention in lumberjack and soldier lore that the greatest rascal may get lucky with the repressed martinet commander's love-thirsty wife. Anthony Mann rises above the cliche by casting Anne Bancroft as Corinna Marston. I had not registered this before this retrospective, but Mann seems to have a good record in his female cast, pursuing interesting performances in interesting roles.

The cinematographer is William C. Mellor, who had already shot The Naked Spur for Mann. The landscapes reveal their full magnificence in majestic rising crane shots in CinemaScope. 

The print looks like Technicolor, but not a good one. Instead, it looks like a print in which the three separations fail to match. We can feel the impact of the composition but not the full colour.