The Last Valley
|
Our Price: $43.50 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $5.80 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Last Valley
Movie Review: Involving, Low-Key Epic
Summary: 3 Stars
Smart script but mostly uninspired filmmaking prevent this from being quite the lost classic it's sometimes billed as. Both leads are good with Caine doing one of his rare accents and it doesn't falter. Florinda Bolkin fascinates. Unfortunately, the villagers are done up in such garishly colorful clothes the picture at times looks like Heidi and the brutal truths the film tries to get at are undercut.Movie Review: The Last Valley
Summary: 3 Stars
At best a 3 star production. Old style filming looking more like a spagetti Western at times. Good story line with mediocre results.Movie Review: Bad geography
Summary: 2 Stars
There are minor irritations. E.g., Hansen is a very unlikely name for a Catholic, comes out of Scandinavia (Lutheran). There are also major irritations. The geography is bad. The movie was shot in Trins, just north of the Brenner Pass, which is fine, but Rheinfelden (just east of Basel and south of Freiburg) is supposed to be near the Alps in the movie. Rheinfelden is a very long way north of the Alps. Our heroes ride out of the valley to join a Sachsen army south of the Rhein planning to cross north to attack Rheinfelden. But Rheinelden is on the south side of the Rhein, no bridge is needed.
Clavell is certainly not Hemmingway. the latter wrote so geographically accurately that he fooled Italian historians into thinking he'd actually been in the Slovenian Alps in WWI. Bad geography means a bad movie, nothing is believable. Rheinfelden on the Swiss side is an old fortified city, the region is Catholic. At least that much is correct.
My wife calls the movie 'blutrünstiges Edelweiss' (bloody Edelweiss), total kitsch. I thought some of the message about war was at least accurate. The attack by protestants under the Sachsen Bernhard is historically accurate. The 'versteckt'/hidden valley could have been inspired by Formazza (Mattertal) above Domodossola in Piemonte, where both Walser from Monte Rosa and Sachsen settled in the 13th century.
Movie Review: The Thirty Years' War -- in real time
Summary: 1 Stars
The Last Valley is set during the Thirty Years' War and this movie seems to be filmed in real time. The Tirolean countryside is breath-taking (kudos to the cinematographer) but the story line is as uneven as the terrain. A band of battle-weary soldiers discovers a valley apparently untouched by the war and decide to winter over, but not without setting down their rather draconian ground rules. (One does wonder why the villagers --who vastly outnumber the soldiers-- don't tell them to take a hike at this point, but logic plays no part in the plot.)
In an attempt to depict religious intolerance, considerable time is wasted on a plot point about relocating a shrine, and everyone in the cast gets to depict some aspect of his or her own bigotry. Some even seem a bit schizophrenic as they are tolerant one moment and combative the next. Michael Caine fares best in this mess as the more or less principled captain of the soldiers and is devastatingly handsome but oddly detached from all the melees between soldiers and villagers, and the viewer is never quite sure from whom he's receiving orders. He and the rest of the cast, are directed to speak in hokey German accents that come and go (Why? Hey, otherwise how would we know it takes place somewhere in Germany?) Omar Sharif is the exception, but like the late Yul Brynner, has an all-purpose "foreign" accent and plays a disgraced teacher also on the run. Claiming no allegiance, his presence is justified by his assertion that he can "talk" to both sides (not that there's a language barrier, just mutual mistrust). He does not fare well in his role; caught mid-career between the dashing hero of Dr. Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, and Funny Girl and the variations on Foxy Grandpa he often portrays today, he comes off as scruffy and confused. Other supporting actors also are wasted. (Look for a brief appearance by a very young Brian Blessed at the start of the film, sporting an odder haircut than his Caesar bangs in I, Claudius.) One of the female interests runs afoul of a fanatic priest and is tortured, then burned at the stake. Lucky girl. The viewer has to endure 20 more minutes of this silliness before the film finally, mercifully ends.
Movie Review: dvd unplayable
Summary: 1 Stars
The Last Valley
the dvd arrived promtly,new as ordered,it came postmarked from canada,
have tried again and again but keeps saying wrong region code!!!!,
have not had this happen before,have read cover and find nothing
diffrent to other dvds,so what is the problem!!.