Sunday, April 19, 2009

Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) - #320

My politics are short and sweet... like the old woman's dance.

Thus we are introduced to this cinematic portrayal of Abraham Lincoln, before he had earned any of the famous nicknames bestowed on him by mythmakers of his time and subsequent generations.


The figure of Lincoln stands out among all the great historic characters from American history - the virtues he's come to embody and the unquestionably pivotal role he played in the story of our nation, and by extension Western civilization elevate him to the status of a man of incalculable importance on the world stage. As a schoolboy, the basics of Lincoln's legend were impressed upon me and I've grown up ever since regarding him, almost unconsciously, as America's "greatest president" and, more consciously, as a person of great moral depth and intellectual complexity. One thing I've not really done though is plunge into an in-depth study of the man himself - I've never read a lengthy biography on Lincoln or closely explored his writings. My knowledge of Lincoln has been largely second-hand, based on a lifetime's worth of cultural references and a couple visits to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. But viewing Young Mr. Lincoln in the context of other great works from its era has helped me to get a better sense of the impact he had on earlier generations, and his significance to an American public that was grappling at the time of its release with the vexing dilemma of what do about the storm brewing over in Europe, and more remotely, over in Japan and the eastern fringes of Asia.

It's easy in hindsight to watch major films of the late 1930s as indicative pre-cursors to the World War that was about to break out. I don't think the connections are unwarranted though. Alexander Nevsky was quite consciously propagandistic and its intended function of stirring up a patriotic frenzy among its Russian viewers is undeniable. La Bete Humaine is not so much a call-to-arms for its French audience, but the final scene of a train rampaging down the tracks with a suicidal engineer at the controls seems appropriate to me. Likewise, the consistent theme of a ruminating Lincoln, nudged from his melancholy reveries, taking the necessary steps to pursue justice since that's what duty requires, fits pretty neatly with the self-concept of American society when, in late 1941, the inevitability of entering another great war became crystal clear. Scene after scene depicts Lincoln standing tall, hands in pockets, brow furrowed just a bit, as he sorts through the facts, ponders the possibilities, then drawls out just the right words needed to establish the truth and set the wisest course.

Case in point: the very first scene, where Abe Lincoln is called up to make his case as to why he should be elected to the state legislature. His delivery is halting, his political principles are summed up in a few short phrases and he espouses humble indifference as to whether or not he succeeds in winning their votes, trusting his fellow citizens to make the right choice regardless of how it affects his personal fortunes. After delivering what must be the shortest-ever political campaign speech, he steps down to do a little bartering with a pioneer family just passing through and ends up with a legal commentary out of the bargain. Studying the book down by the river, propped up against a stately old tree, reflecting on the law's concept of "rights," he has an epiphany: " 'The rights of life, reputation and liberty. The rights to acquire and hold property. Wrongs are violations of those rights.' By jing, that's all there is to it. Right and wrong." The ideal American credo right there! And a perfect jumping-off point for the episodic, anecdotal narrative that follows.

Director John Ford, a giant among American auteurs, presumes a fair amount of shared knowledge among the viewers of this film, making oblique, punctuated references to certain episodes without supplying much in the way of backstory. Lincoln's youthful affections for Ann Rutledge, his later marriage to Mary Todd and intense political rivalry with Stephen Douglas, for example, all play into key scenes, but wouldn't make their intended impact for today's viewers if they lacked previous information on these milestones of Lincoln's career. And I do wonder how much of this material is familiar to people younger than 40 today - at least, those who haven't made intentional effort to study up on Lincoln. My hunch is that the stories of young "Honest Abe" splitting rails and teaching himself to read by firelight in his rustic log cabin don't get featured as much in school classrooms as they once did, and that the more detailed accounts of his life and career have been crowded out of the curriculum in any case by nearly 70 years of history that have passed since the completion of Young Mr. Lincoln. Still, I think those gaps are easy enough to fill in, and the true charm of this film rests more in the character of the man portrayed on screen and has less to do with the "aha!" moments we experience when seeing the dots connected between what happens on screen and what we learned in 4th grade.

Another potential obstacle for today's viewers is to not be put off or misled by the quaint aspects of the production. It would be a mistake to view this film as corny, simplistic or old-fashioned, but I can see how some would get that impression. The sprightly, melodramatic soundtrack music, the rustic humor, the sentimental touches and the general wholesomeness of the storyline (by today's standards) could come across as hokey to viewers accustomed to films with a lot more edge to them. Even the presence of the great all-American actor Henry Fonda in the lead role, as a tall, taciturn, legendary patriot may put off those who like their films a little more on the subversive, challenging side. To such viewers, I say "look closer."


Just because the film features a 4th of July parade down Main Street USA doesn't imply that it's bogged down by syrupy straight-from-Disney prefabrication. That sequence, which leads into a series of scenes set in a mid-19th century county fair, offers a wonderful example of Ford's ability to craft intricate, tightly composed and highly active crowd scenes that reveal a lot of amusing details on repeat viewings.

Speaking of repeat viewings, it just so happens that I wrote a fairly descriptive blog entry on this film last July, well before I started my current project of watching all the Criterion feature films in chronological order of release. So you can check that out for some further thought I have on this movie. I think I have a better grasp of what Ford was doing now that I'm watching it alongside the films of his contemporaries like Renoir, Hitchcock and Eisenstein (whose 1945 essay on Ford, revealing that Young Mr. Lincoln is the film he wished he had made, is included in the DVD package.) But I think it stands very well on its own. For reasons probably having a lot more to do with distribution rights than artistic merit, this is the only John Ford film included (so far) in the Criterion Collection. His other major works have been released by American studios, and I look forward some day to making greater acquaintance with films like Stagecoach, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley. But it may be a few years... I've got more than 400 Criterion movies I have to watch before I can delve into another cinematic treasure trove!

Finally, I can't help but toss in an observation or two on the political implications of a film like Young Mr. Lincoln when viewed in the context of our own times. Like Lincoln, our current president hails from Illinois (though born elsewhere) and is seen by some as a great man of the people and by others as an opportunist bent on tyranny. Both of them faced forces of cultural and political resistance based in the US South, though it remains to be seen of course just how far today's conservatives go in repudiating Obama's efforts. And while it's much too early to credit Barack Obama with anything close to resembling Lincoln's demonstrable impact on American and world history, I feel comfortable asserting that the pieces are in place for the parallels to continue developing. I doubt that we'll be facing the prospect of civil war in this country within the next few years (and probably much longer) but there's little doubt in my mind that our president, and our nation, will have to face significant moments of reckoning in the near future - I can only hope that we'll have the insight, wisdom and resilience to respond as admirably as did the noble-hearted Great Emancipator.
 

2 comments:

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