Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
Location: Home (DVD)
Seen Before: No
Rating: 3.0
Am I again guilty of building a film up, only to be dissapointed with the outcome having watched it?
No, I don't think so. I think John Ford does an okay job by way of Young Mr. Lincoln, but hasn't produced anything outstanding. The way he and the screenwriter structure their story is really problematic for me; the first third (or act, really) of the film tries so blatantly hard to get the viewer to love, respect, and root for Lincoln that it almost made me want to say out loud, "are you serious?" The first thirty-odd minutes are simply Honest Abe-propaganda. Not until the murder (where the photography and compositions really shines) does the film pick up a bit and the story really start. Even after that, though, so much doesn't feel right: in the court room, Lincoln comes off as pompous as he cracks jokes met with truely strange, uproarious laughter--how uncivilized was the judicial system of the mid 1800s!
The thread holding this all together, however, is Henry Fonda's turn at Abe. Even if the choices made for the character by the filmmakers came off as ostentatious, Fonda is able to channel that and bring a more modest tone to him.
posted by Marco Roman at 3:48 PM
2 Comments:
I agree with your comments, although I did star to doze off at the end. I thought a lot of the cinematography was really impressive but the story didn't hold my interest completely.
I don't fully agree. Capra manages to construct the myth of "Honest Abe" while deconstructing it at the same time. Take the murder, there are eyewitnesses who believe something entirely different than what they saw. And is this not the same as questioning the accuracy in storytelling in general, not to mention a bio-pic?
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