Michael Mann wasn’t entirely happy with the speedy theatrical cut of The Last Of The Mohicans – and a few different variants have been released since. Back when he started casting for the film that would become Bram Stoker’s Dracula, director Francis Ford Coppola had in mind Daniel Day Lewis to take the title role. ... The Last Of The Mohicans and Michael Mann’s assorted re-edits
Michael Mann wasn’t entirely happy with the speedy theatrical cut of The Last Of The Mohicans – and a few different variants have been released since.
Back when he started casting for the film that would become Bram Stoker’s Dracula, director Francis Ford Coppola had in mind Daniel Day Lewis to take the title role. He reasoned that he wanted the best actor he could possibly get, and Day Lewis was thus a fairly logical name on the shortlist to play the Count.
Gary Oldman, another name on said list, ended up playing Dracula. But for Day Lewis, the discussion was a non-starter, due to his commitment to another project: the terrific The Last Of The Mohicans.
This was director Michael Mann’s take on James Fenimore Cooper’s novel which had previously been adapted for the screen in 1936. Mann penned the screenplay along with Christopher Crowe for the historical action drama, and the film was put together by Morgan Creek Productions. It in turn inked a deal for 20th Century Fox to distribute the movie in the US, and Warner Bros elsewhere.
It was this deal that led to a disparity for a little while. Michael Mann went back and re-edited his film more than once, and for a while, the version of the movie you could buy on DVD was dependent on where you lived. In the UK, until fairly recently, it was the Warner Bros-released original cut (which many who fell in love with the film in that form still prefer), whereas Fox updated its releases with each altered version Michael Mann put out. Only more recently is it the Mann final cuts that have become the de facto versions across the world.
Thus, the original theatrical version weighs in at 112 minutes. That’s the version that was released on video in 1993, and on DVD in the UK at the end of the decade.
It should be noted that Mann’s original cut apparently came in at nearly three hours, and Fox wanted it to be shorter. A lot shorter. He was facing a tight deadline, and got the movie down to under two hours, although he was said never to have been happy with that version. The added post-production time delayed the release, incidentally, and it raised eyebrows when its off-peak autumn release slot played to its favour, and the film became a sleeper hit. Mann thus got agreement that he could have a version closer to his own for a home release.
As such, in the US, a Director’s Expanded Edition was put on sale in 1999, that lengthened the film to 117 minutes.
Interestingly, Mann wasn’t just putting material into the film – he was taking a few bits out too. This breakdown goes through the 44 changes between the two cuts of the film. Mann also rearranged the order of certain scenes, but many fans complained it was to the detriment of the movie. A new, explain-y monologue at the end in particular was a cause for some grumbling.
Then, in 2010, the film landed on Blu-ray in America, and it got another re-edit. This time, the film was notably darker in certain moments, apparently as per Mann’s instructions. The monologue disappeared too, and Mann replaced certain shots and re-edited individual scenes.
Finally, Mann found a cut he settled on with what was billed as the Director’s Definitive Cut. This arrived in 2010, and was his third cut of the movie. It’s one that, as many have observed, straddles both the Expanded Edition and the original theatrical version. Mann reverses some of the decisions he made with his first recut, and takes the running time down to 114 minutes. Again, here’s the full list of changes.
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As he explained to Collider a few years ago, Mann regards the Director’s Definitive Cut as “the best version”. He explained that “there was a speech by Chingachgook at the end, I may have felt ‘I really have to make these themes land, so I’ll speechify them’. They don’t need to be speechified, it’s implicit, so I took that out. It was never in, it used to be out in the first theatrical version of the movie, it should’ve stayed out. That’s a film that’s a successful film and I like a lot, and I’ve changed it a number of times”.
It should be noted he’s tinkered with most of his other movies too, making minor changes to Heat and a more substantive new version of Ali, for instance. (An interesting fact re: Ali – on the day of the boxing drama’s UK premiere, someone noticed a light on in the projection room of the cinema in which the screening was to take place. It was Mann himself, making last-minute changes to the print.)
In Australia at least, there’s now a newly-released Ultimate Edition Blu-ray set of The Last Of The Mohicans, which includes both the theatrical version and the Definitive Director’s Cut. In the case of the former, it’s the first time that version has been available on Blu-ray. You can read more about it here.
Which leads us to a point where everybody wins. The film remains excellent, with an outstanding score too. Mann has his version out there, while fans tied to the theatrical version now have that option to rewatch. Plus, you’d have to say that Gary Oldman did a pretty decent job in Bram Stoker’s Dracula as well.
A version of this article was previously published on Film Stories in 2020.
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