The Last Valley (1970)

Director:

James Clavell

Writers:

James Clavell (writer)
J.B. Pick (novel)

Release Date:

28 January 1971 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | War

Tagline:

From An Age of Conflict...A Film For The Ages

Plot:

People in a small German village in the last valley to remain untouched by the devastating Thirty Years'...

Plot Keywords:

Box Office Failure | Hanged Family | Mercenary | Hanging | Hanged Child

Cast

Michael Caine	...	The Captain
Omar Sharif	...	Vogel
Florinda Bolkan	...	Erica
Nigel Davenport	...	Gruber
Per Oscarsson	...	Father Sebastian
Arthur O'Connell	...	Hoffman
Madeleine Hinde	...	Inge (as Madeline Hinde)
Yorgo Voyagis	...	Pirelli
Miguel Alejandro	...	Julio
Christian Roberts	...	Andreas
Brian Blessed	...	Korski
Ian Hogg	...	Graf
Michael Gothard	...	Hansen
George Innes	...	Vornez
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Ralph Arliss	...	Claus
Claudia Butenuth	...	Helga
Paul Challen	...	Zollner
Chris Chittell	...	Svenson
Kurt Christian	...	Tsarus
Dave Crowley	...	Pastori
Holly du Marreck	...	Little Girl
Mark Edwards	...	Sernen
John Hallam	...	Geddes
Frazer Hines	...	Corg
Leon Lissek	...	Czeraki
Andrew McCulloch	...	Shutz
Michaela	...	Peasant Girl
Seyton Pooley	...	Nansen
Irene Prador	...	Frau Hoffman
Jack Shepherd	...	Eskesen
Vladek Sheybal	...	Mathias
Larry Taylor	...	Garnak
Edward Underdown	...	Gnarled Peasant
Tony Vogel	...	Tub
Patrick Westwood	...	Rethman

Runtime:

Canada:125 min | USA:128 min

Country:

UK | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) | Mono (35 mm prints)

Certification:

Iceland:16 | West Germany:18 | Finland:K-16 | Norway:18 (1971) | USA:GP (original rating) | USA:PG | Singapore:PG | UK:AA (original rating) | UK:15 (video rating) | Australia:M

Filming Locations:

Hanniford Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, UK

Company:

ABC Pictures

Trivia:

Average Shot Length = ~5.3 seconds. Median Shot Length = ~5.0 seconds.

Doom Patrol

This is a movie made during a time when writers, novelists, like Clavell and Crichton, were allowed to make their own films. What you have are literate, probing plots and stories, sometimes failed by low budgets or

lack of experience. With LAST VALLEY, there's an otherworldly quality to Clavell's work, steepled in strict historical fact; Clavell postulates a fantasy valley where humans live hidden from the brutality and horror of war; they are genetic angels, of a sort, but those in control are wise to the ways of a world ruled by knife. A band of soldiers, lacking a country or

home to call their home, caught in the hurricane of this war, stumble into a seeming Elysian Fields and begin to infect it with pragmatic survival and certain doom. The ways of human beings as a mass descend on the slight-populated community.

People criticize the film as dark, equating realism. Fact is, Clavell shows a contrast between the world Michael Caine, as the Captain, knows and is scarred by, and the hidden land in which beautiful women and children are protected, fed and safe. Caine's Captain has been a wanton butcher in the war, the murderer of women and children. Yet he only understands the quality of this paradise after he has nearly destroyed it.

The most telling sequences are those in which these men from outside the hidden land, knowing the damage they are causing to this one place where beautiful women can live unraped and men as equals, are forced to leave. The women in love with them wish to accompany them into the horror the men know. Caine, in particular, leaves his lover under a false sense of security, believing she will be safe. His heart-breaking understanding of this woman's loyalty to him, bred in her by a hidden land where love can be expressed devoid of force and tragedy, comes only in the end; his last touch with this lover is with a glove made of armor, outfitted for the killing he will do once he leaves the valley and rejoins the war.

There is probably the great performance of Caine's career up on screen in this film. Outside of GET CARTER, you'll never see Caine inhabit a role more fully. Even if the scope of the story gets away from Clavell at the end, and could have benefitted from the expanded format of SHOGUN say, this is a big-time view of a great actor in Caine and a literate script from Clavell that will, without doubt, remain fixed in the mind.