The Last Valley - Movie Message Boards

Byron Orlock

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Since even the redoubtable Charlie Croker tells me he’s never heard of this movie, I felt it incumbent upon me to draw it to the attention of you all. For my money it’s a Forgotten Masterpiece (albeit of the flawed, minor variety). I think it deserves to be remembered.

Competently directed by the novelist James Clavell (Shogun), and based on a novel by James B. Pick, it boasts stunning cinematography by Norman Warwick and John Wilcox, plus an excellent score by Oscar-winner John Barry.

The year is 1641. The Thirty Years War, which has reduced most of Europe to chaos, still has seven years to run. Babies who were born after the war began are grown men now and part of the armies which overrun Germany. People have almost forgotten peace. Famine is rife, plague everywhere.

On to the scene comes Vogl, a former scholar, now reduced to skulking from village to village, begging his bread. Just as he’s driven from one village, a band of mercenaries descend upon it, killing, raping and plundering. Vogl runs for his life through a mist-shrouded forest. Then a miracle happens. The mist clears, and he finds himself in a beautiful, fertile valley, hidden from view in the midst of the forest and untouched by the War. He makes his way down to the one village, and finds it deserted. Next thing, the same band of mercenaries, who have taken the same route, come thundering after him.

The leader of the band is the enigmatic “Captain”, played by Michael Caine. At first only concerned with stealing all the food and valuables he can, he changes his mind when Vogl puts a revolutionary idea to him: with Winter coming on, why not quarter his troops in the valley until Spring, living off the fat of the land instead of freezing and starving in camp. The Captain sees the sense of this, after which he and Vogl (seen here with Brian Blessed)

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track down the villagers in their hiding place and offers to spare their lives in return for a billet. The Mayor, Gruber, is a pragmatic man. He agrees. Caine guarantees his men’s good behaviour, instituting severe punishments for any lawlessness. Meanwhile a brothel is opened up in the village, staffed by village girls, for the soldiers’ use.

Unfortunately. the mercenaries are made up half of Protestants and half Catholics, including the thoroughly nasty Hansen (Michael Gothard) who stirs up religious dissent at every turn, and moreover harbours lustful ambitions for Inge (Madeleine Hinde), a local virgin excused knocking-shop duties. The Captain’s efforts to keep the lid on the resulting pressure cooker, and the increasing mutual respect between villagers and mercenaries as the Winter progresses, provide the storyline of the rest of the film.

Interspersed with this is much intelligent debate, mostly between the pacifist Vogl and the “Killer Beast”, as the Captain acknowledges himself (though he seems to take no pleasure in killing). As well as the rights and wrongs of waging War, ideas are advanced on the nature of duty, Religion and fanaticism.

There’s so much going for this film that it’s hard to credit the obscurity into which it’s fallen. Michael Caine, in the book Candidly Caine, thought it had been his best performance to date. Omar Sharif was never better either. Nigel Davenport is marvellously wily, Michael Gothard incredibly evil, Per Oscarsson, as the witch-burning priest who promises the girls in his flock Indulgence from Purgatory if they staff the brothel, is convincingly creepy. There are other excellent smaller performances and it all looks spectacular. So what went wrong?

Most of the criticism I’ve read seems to miss the point. A lot seems to be aimed at Michael Caine’s beard (which surely harms nobody)

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and his accent, which is carefully understated. So is his performance, but that only serves to make his character more chilling. Vogl is accused of voicing 1970s philosophy, which indeed he does: but since he’s been forced over 23 years to abandon all the certainties he was brought up with and work out a new philosophy for himself, why not?

A more telling complaint concerns the bewildering variety of accents in the cast. This has always puzzled me. Caine’s soldiers are supposed to have been gathered from the four quarters of Europe, so should be of widely differing nationalities. Instead, oddly, they’re nearly all played by British actors - Gothard, Blessed, Jack Shepherd, Ian Hogg, George Innes - with British accents. Odder still, the isolated and inbred villagers sound like the United Nations General Assembly. Apart from the British Davenport, we’re asked to accept a Norwegian (Oscarsson), a Pole (Vladek Sheybal), an American (Arthur O’Connell) and even a Brazilian (Florinda Bolkan). It’s a mistake, and it certainly interferes with the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief, but it’s not in itself enough to sink the film.

I suspect the true stumbling block is the film’s relentlessly downbeat take on history. No solutions are offered. At the end, the War is still relentlessly going on. There are no guarantees that the village will not be discovered and pillaged before it ends. Apart from one young couple, no one has learned anything from the experience. The villagers finally turn on the man who saved them,

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and all the bad old ways and beliefs remain in force. Ultimately, The Last Valley leaves a sour taste in the mouth, and that may be why it flopped at the Box Office.

A pity. Especially since this film shows what Omar Sharif could do. Two years earlier, during the making of Mayerling, his attitude had been, “People pay to see me, not some 19th Century Austrian Prince”. It may be that the failure of The Last Valley, after he’d put his heart and soul into his performance, convinced him that he’d been right the first time.

For my money, it’s ripe for revival. Check it out if you get the chance.