Customer Reviews

Young Mr. Lincoln: The (The Criterion Collection)

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1939 is universally accepted as the greatest year in Hollywood history, with more classic films released than in any other, and John Ford directed three of the best, "Stagecoach", "Drums Along the Mohawk", and this beautiful homage to frontier days and a young backwoods lawyer destined to eventually save the Union, "Young Mr. Lincoln".

With the world plunging into a war that America dreaded, but knew it would be drawn into, Abraham Lincoln was much on people's minds, in 1939, as someone who had faced the same dilemma in his own life, and had triumphed. On Broadway, Robert E. Sherwood's award-winning "Abe Lincoln in Illinois", with Raymond Massey's physically dead-on portrayal, was playing to packed houses (it would be filmed in 1940). Carl Sandburg's continuation of his epic biography, "Abraham Lincoln: The War Years", was published, and quickly became a best seller. President Roosevelt frequently referred to Lincoln in speeches, and the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C., became the most popular landmark in town (a fact that Frank Capra made good use of, in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington").

All this was not lost on Darryl F. Zanuck, at 20th Century Fox; as soon as he read Lamar Trotti's screenplay of Lincoln's early days as a lawyer, he designated it a 'prestige' production, and assigned John Ford to direct, and Henry Fonda, to star.

Fonda did NOT want to play Lincoln; he felt he couldn't do justice to the 'Great Emancipator', and feared a bad performance would damage his career. Even a filmed make-up test, in which he was stunned by how much he would resemble Lincoln, wouldn't change his mind. According to Fonda, John Ford, whom he'd never worked with, cussed him out royally, at their first meeting, and explained he wasn't portraying the Lincoln of Legend, but a young "jackanape" country lawyer facing his first murder trial. Humbled, Fonda took the role. (John Ford offered a different scenario of the events, but the outcome was the same!) Obviously, they found a chemistry together that worked, as nearly all of their pairings would produce 'classics'.

Unlike the introverted, melancholia-racked Lincoln of "Abe Lincoln in Illinois", Ford's vision was that of a shy but likable young attorney, who made friends easily, and misses the mother he lost, too young (resulting in a bond with a pioneer mother that becomes a vital part of the story). Injustice riles him, and he speaks 'common sense' to quell violence, interlaced with doses of humor. Both productions play on Lincoln's (undocumented) relationship with Ann Rutledge; in Ford's version, the pair are truly in love, and committed to each other. After her death, Lincoln would frequently visit her grave, to share his life with her 'spirit' (a theme Ford would continue in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon").

A murder trial is the centerpiece of the film, and shows the prodigious talents of the star and director. Fonda deftly portrays Lincoln's inexperience, yet earnest belief in justice tempered with mercy, and Ford emphasizes the gulf between the big-city 'intellectuals' (represented by pompous D.A. Donald Meek, and his slick 'advisor', Stephen Douglas, played by a young Milburn Stone), and the informal, rule-bending country sense of Lincoln. With Ford 'regular' Ward Bond as a key witness, the trial is both unconventional, and riveting.

With the film closing as Lincoln strides away into the stormy distance, and his destiny (dissolving into a view of the statue at the Lincoln Memorial), audiences could take comfort in the film's message that if a cause is just, good would ultimately triumph.

"Young Mr. Lincoln" is a truly remarkable film, from an amazing year!

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

The Young Mr. Lincoln directed by John Ford is partially fictional account of Abraham Lincoln's life before he was president or in public office.

In the film he becomes an attorney and he defends two brothers accused of stabbing a man to death. Henry Fonda plays the role of Lincoln and it depicts him as a mild mannered man with much potential.

I found the film to be very good and having seen John Ford's film, "How Green Was My Valley" I've had a chance to compare the two.

The Criterion DVD hs some great special features which I really liked.

Disc one contains the film.

Disc two contains a 1992 BBC biographical feature of John Ford (showing excerpts of many of his films), a 1975 BBC talk show interview with lead actor Henry Fonda, audio interviews of John Ford and Henry Fonda, a slide show of production documents, and a dramatic audio presentation of the film with Henry Fonda playing Lincoln again. The audio is both on the DVD menu and in an MP3 file which can be accessed on a computer.

Also the liner notes have 32 pages of extra material.

This is one of the Best American films released by Criterion and I highly recommend it.

The reviewer below criticizes the movie's historical inaccuracies which is certainly valid. I am in his/her debt to have learned the real story.

However, I do feel the movie was true to Lincoln's character and I can forgive Hollywood for adjusting the story to fit their idea of Lincoln. After all, it's not as if they claimed he got away from the Ford Theater and hid for several years.

Anyway, as a movie it is beautifully told, Fonda is brilliant and all the characters in the little town are nicely drawn.

A nicely-paced, humorous, touching and most importantly, entertaining movie. Great courtroom scenes also!

At one level I liked Young Mr. Lincoln a lot. The film is a black-and-white picture postcard to look at, with immaculate framing and carefully selected imagery to extend the visual idea of early America. It's also a remarkable example of Hollywood myth-making, laying on with a trowel the nobility, natural shrewdness, sensitivity and common-man origins of the man who became a myth. Plus it brings out all the John Ford sympathies for the honesty and goodness of hard-workin' folks. I found myself unmoved by the reverential attitude of the movie; I felt a hymn was always playing in the background, and, sure enough, a hymn, or something close enough, starts playing at the end. With all the research and excellent books about Lincoln around nowadays, with all that we've come to learn about the man, I can't help but think that Lincoln would be smiling if he saw this film.

Yet, it's effective as all get out in portraying a myth we want to believe about American life on the frontier and of the man who became our greatest president. There's not a scene in the movie where Ford doesn't fail to effectively stress a simple emotion, like love, humor, longing, honesty and doubt. He cleverly demonstrates in many scenes, particularly in the courtroom, Lincoln's shrewdness. Lincoln consistently outwits others, whether in a tug-o-war, with a man's name, selecting a juror, facing down a mob or trapping a murderer. He might use a request to sample some turnip greens because he's hungry, but he really wants a reason to ask a woman in private to tell him a secret she cannot say in front of others.

Henry Fonda, even with a false nose, gives a myth-making performance, himself. Lincoln's homespun nobility is emphasized by Ford with such an unrelenting consistency that I think only Fonda's innate likeabilty and skill make it interesting. Lincoln's ambition and ability to move a crowd his way are only alluded to, but Fonda shows us (and so does Ford) that there was iron in Lincoln's soul.

The movie is a beauty to look at. I don't know how many times we see someone, especially Lincoln, on a hill posed against a cloudy sky, with a tree framing the shot, but it works every time. The lengthy vignettes in the first half of the movie showing us the down-to-earth delights of the Fourth of July celebration -- the tug-o-war, the pie contest -- is pure corn, pure John Ford, and still purely effective in making us think there might really have been a time like this -- just like this -- in our history. Who knows, I'm sure there was.

The Criterion presentation is excellent. Included in the case is a 27-page booklet with essays on Lincoln and Ford. The extras on the second disc contain, among other items, a profile on Ford and a lengthy interview with Fonda.

I watched this movie on the Fourth of July, and was reminded that 180 years ago, also on the Fourth, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died...on the fiftieth anniversary of their signing the Declaration of Independence.

In John Ford's Directorial debut, Young Mr. Lincoln succeeds in every aspect of delivering a true poignant memorable and serene film about One of America's greatest Presidents. Mr. Lincoln played by Henry Fonda is a simple yet caring man capable of hiding his ambitious desires for natural law and community. Being a novice lawyer in a small minded town is not easy as Mr. Lincoln breaks up infuriated mobbs, and gives every bit of solace and tranquility to those in need. He is not stern or condescending in the least bit as he reaches out to anyone in need of assitance with pure sincerity. Within in each frame of exterior shots of the Ilinois landscape it only enhances Lincoln's bond with nature as he gazes and reflects onto his favorite river. Abraham Lincoln being long deceased and gone has not at all in any regards disrupted my bond with this great American president. It is as though you are viewing an historical figure that lives in our present time period. Mr. Lincoln even at the most strenous and tense moments (Court Room Scene) is able to contribute a calm and scerene atomsphere with his gleeful relaxed humor. As usual I am ever so grateful to the Criterion Collection for establishing such a presitgious and artful collection because this film derserves every bit of praise and recoginition. A true Gem for any Criterion or history Aficianado...

While Ford's remarkably photographed film covers ten years in the life of young Abraham Lincoln, the focus is on a single episode of his life that only a master of nuance like Ford could use to tell effectively the whole story of his career. The first several scenes, are simply a series of moments that establish a mood and Lincoln's attitude: he is smart but uneducated, he was in love with a woman who believes in him and whose death motivates him to take up her challenge to "be somebody", he is simultaneously introspective and isolated and yet more at home with the "common people" than with elites, able to connect by not seeming to take himself all that seriously, he understands the law as a tool for overcoming wrongs and achieving rights rather than an end in itself. The story itself gets rolling when, after he's established himself as a new lawyer, a couple of country kids get in a fight with a local bully who also happens to be a deputy and accidentally kill him. His defense of the kids simultaneously illustrates: (1) Lincoln's capacity to appeal to simple intuitions of right and wrong, sometimes through humor and self-deprecation and simple story telling, that spoke to an American populace so far not entirely committed to lawfulness; (2) tied to that theme is the idea that the people's sense of justice was rooted in feeling -- as evidenced by their sense that a lynching performed in outrage would serve justice -- so Lincoln understood that for the people to commit themselves to the law required an appeal to the same level of feeling and intuition that drove them to be more or less neighborly for the most part and to group together in outrage and vengeance on occasion; (3) Lincoln's ambiguous sense of ambition: attracted to a higher life, and yet feeling a bit out of place within it; motivated in part by a desire for fairness, but in part by a longing to be respected and to demonstrate the condescension of the elite and educated to be misplaced. It is a compelling piece of filmmaking -- illustrative of the American style of mythmaking that aims to show the "ordinary" common man behind the legend rather than the legendary origins of a hero. Criterion has, as usual, done a remarkable job with the film -- that visually seems not to have aged at all.

"Young Mr. Lincoln" is my favorite John Ford film, period. Oh, sure--"The Searchers" gets all the accolades (and it is a great film), but for my dough, Pappy's 1939 filmic tone poem is both his (and Henry Fonda's)finest hour. From Alfred Newman's inexplicably underappreciated score to Lamar Trotti's iconic screenplay, there's not a false note here... We won't go into historical accuracy--that wasn't the aim of "print the legend" Ford (one shudders to think of Fonda portraying the "real" Wyatt Earp!).There are scenes in this film (particularly Abe's walk on the riverbank with Ann Rutledge)that are able to reduce me to tears if I even think about them, let alone watch them. With all due respect to Raymond Massey, this is the Lincoln performance against which all others must be judged. Kudos for the good folks at Criterion for selecting this film as their first Ford entry, although a commentary track from Bogdanovich, Eyman or McBride woulda been nice. On reflection, though, maybe they made the right call--this is one movie that definitely speaks for itself....

The knock on Ford by many modern filmakers is that Ford was essentially a propagandist. Putting works of art into historical context can sometimes be a challenge. Young Mr Lincoln, like much of Ford's work, is a product of it's time. A time when the grip of the great drepression had yet to be broken and big trouble was brewing in Europe and Asia. Young Mr Lincoln is an attempt to reaffirm basic American values at a time when their survival could have been in question. Who better to deliver that message than that most mythic of US Presidents Abraham Lincoln.

The beauty of Ford's story is that he doesn't use the device of the matryed President but that of the young "Jackleg Lawyer", whose own realization that the law is the ability to know the differnece between what's right and what's wrong and the courage to say so. This reflects not only Lincoln's journey of discovery but also the estblishment of the rule of law in the young unsophisticated frontier society. This is a theme Ford returns to again and again from Tom Joad in the the Grapes of Wrath to Ransome Stoddard in Libery Valance.

Ford's genius here is his ability to portray Lincoln as more man than than myth. This isn't the torured author of the Gettysburg address but a young man finding his way. While Ford is guilty at times at crossing over into iconography; most notably his shots of the seated Lincoln in the court room bare a more than passing resemblance to his later monumental pose, it's the little touches that he adds that humanize Lincoln. Getting himself a free meal by being unable to make up his mind as a judge at the pie baking contest. His use of humor to illustrate a fine legal point and as way to win people over. Shelby Foote once said that Lincoln unlike most men, was willing to allow you to think him an idiot because he would use it to his advantage later. We see that here in the courtroom scenes where the seemingly bumbling Lincoln is painted in sharp contrast to the dapper and learned opposing counsel who pompusly displays his superior knowledge of the law. Lincoln must rely on his simple man's knowledge of right and wrong rather than an extensive knowledge of the law. This is perhaps something he knows his audience can perhaps better relate too. His casual jokes and jibes at his opponets expense are devastatingly effective.

In Lincoln's story Ford is also telling a chapter in the story of the country. He paints a fairly complete picture of early American life. Fraught with hardship and trajedy stalking every family with a change in the weather. We see simple country people who work hard and take great joy in the celebration of a town carnivale. We see the darker underside side as well. Men who drink too much who are all too willing to settle disputes with violence. Violence that quickly get's out of hand and leads to murder. More drink and a fear of outsiders that leads a crowd of normally god fearing christian men to try and take the law into their own hands. Only the courage and the wit of Lincoln prevent a further trajedy. By imploring the crowd to not cheat him out of his first real clients Lincoln gets the crowd to laugh at him thus easing their lust for blood. Sensing an opportunity he quotes a line of scripture invoking a sense of shame and the threat of lynching is averted.

When the scene shifts to the court room the film really finds it's pace. It becomes not only a biography but a cracking good courtroom drama as good as any. We see frontier justice rudely applied. Ford understands that this was not only an awesome life or death spectacle part religuous affirmation but also part entertainment for the masses and a much needed distraction from grimmer exisitance of frontier life. Lincoln plays on this as well when he uses his sense of humor in an attempt to bring the crowd and ultimately the jury to his side.

This is Henry Fonda's first film with Ford and he is the emodiment of Lincoln as though depicted by Norman Rockwell. He is solemn enough at times to lend some of the appropriate reverence but callow enough when delivering homespun midwestern humor to seem genuine. Again as in most of Fords work familiar faces are noticable throughout. Most notable Ward Bond as J Palmer Cass whose name gives Lincoln his best opportunity for a joke in the film.

Ford often debunked the idea that he was an artist. But he photographs this as he does almost all of his work with the studied eye. His scenes are composed and lit as though set up by the painter Caleb Bingham. His attention to detail in the faces of the crowd is impressive, nothing seems left to chance, everything is considered. While not the masterpiece that Grapes of Wrath is nor even perhaps as good as Liberty Valance, this is still a beautiful film. And though it skirts the edges of mythology at times it's not the work of a propagandist. This is an early work of a great film maker telling the story of a nation and a man who had the courage to stand up for what he believed was right. I wathched this film with my teenage son who despite the fact that it's in black and white, it's noticable lack of action and no special effects, seemd to enjoy it. It held his interest and sparked a fair amount of conversation about Lincoln the nature of people and the prevelance of mob justice on the frontier. Considering that this film was made when my own father was a teenager that has to say something about the timelessness of a great film. Even those that were a reflection of their time.

Historical romance? Of course, this is what a lot of us think of when we think of our 16th president. John Ford romanticizes Lincoln's evolution from country hick to brilliant lawyer (and soon-to-be politician) with an entertaining script and colorful characters. Fonda is a perfect Lincoln. The courtroom scenes are gripping and sometimes hilarious. The best movie about Lincoln ever made.

This is simply a superb movie. All aspiring directors, screen-writers, actors, etc. should watch this film to experience a truly great film. If they can't relate, perhaps the best we can hope for in modern film will be decent literary adaptations.

The film depicts a small slice of Lincoln's early life, his work as a young lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. The film cannot be taken as accurate history of Lincoln's life. Rather it presents an imaginative rendition of how a young Lincoln might have acted given his character, intelligence and homespun origins. The centerpiece of the film is Lincoln's brilliant defense of two brothers accused of murder. While the murder case, is the main plot, there are numerous other vignettes that include humor, romance, frontier life, and touches of American history, such as the role played by Stephen Douglas, Lincoln's great political rival. The climactic courtroom scene, in which an isolated and unproven Lincoln ferrets out the startling truth of the case at hand, moves seamlessly from comedy to pathos to riveting and startling intense drama, in which the viewer feels himself as amazed and exhilarated as those present in the scene itself.

Henry Fonda plays Lincoln marvelously. The many other character actors are also superlative. By the film's conclusion, one knows that one is looking not just at a great movie, but a masterpiece of direction, cinematography, screen-writing and acting. This is a work of genius and John Ford earns his place as one of the best directors in the history of cinema.