Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) - Criterion Remaster

Considering the legacy of films left by the great John Ford (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath), it is a little strange that Criterion chose Young Mr. Lincoln as the first of his films to get the luxe treatment it typically provides. Most movie-goers - even cinefiles - probably haven't seen the film, or even heard of it.

Nonetheless, here we are, with a mid-career, somewhat fictionalized story about Abraham Lincoln's days as a kid with gumption and a desire to become a lawyer, despite never attending law school for the training. The first act of the film gives us Lincoln (Henry Fonda, with the perfect haircut for the job) losing his first love and meeting Mary Todd, then starting up a bootstrap law practice where his primary means of settling disputes is the threat of kicking his clients in the rump.


Young Mr. Lincoln was Ford's first film with Henry Fonda, another actor with a very definite function within the director's films. Through careful crafting of Fonda's character and the script, Ford created for the actor a persona that embodied the traditional qualities of American idealism and a liberal attitude toward the development of the absolutes of civilization. Though this persona was continued in other Ford-Fonda collaborations until 1948 when the actor returned to the New York stage, it was initially employed to elevate the story of Lincoln's early years to the level of a national myth, a myth consistent with the director's own philosophy.


In Drums Across the Mohawk , the Fonda persona's aspirations toward civilization are inherent in his yearning for land and a home. When he loses his home, much of his personal stability and self-reliance vanishes with it, and the structure of his family life hovers near fragmentation. In Young Mr. Lincoln, however, the idea of civilization is represented by the broadest concept of the law—one that is indicated by Lincoln's statement in the trial scene. His profession that "I may not know much about the law, but I know what is right!" has less to do with a court of justice than it does with Ford's idea of a higher law. The future president is presented by the film as a proponent of God's law, which Ford relates through a number of scenes, as being intertwined with concepts of family, the future and nature itself. One scene, in which Lincoln is sitting by a river studying Blackstone's Commentaries and is interrupted by Ann Rutledge who wants to talk about the future, ties all of these ideas together as does his monologue at her grave when he invokes her memory (as well as that of his deceased mother) to aid in his decision to become a lawyer. The entire trial sequence, in fact, casts Lincoln in the role of a defender of the American family, attempting to keep it intact. Lincoln here is kind of a punk, evidenced best when he spends most of his days in court leaning back in a chair with his feet up on the table. What would Wapner say about that?


The use of the poem, "Nancy Hanks," at the beginning of the film establishes for the viewer a consciousness of the historical Lincoln while, at the same time, serving notice that the function of art is not simply a retelling of history but a rewriting as well. Therefore, the story that follows utilizes the audience's already mythical assumptions concerning the historical personage as one element in Ford's creation of the new myth. The character is removed from its historical context, its useful qualities extracted and merged with those of the carefully constructed Fonda persona to be employed for Ford's own purposes. So striking was the merger of the Fonda and Lincoln qualities that, for many years, the film was heralded solely for the youthful exuberance of Fonda's performance. Now, however, the film is appreciated for its classic craftsmanship and as an exposition of the mythmaking process in America. Fonda is good-to-great here, and you can see why Ford aficionados love the film.


This rip fits on one third of a single-layer DVD. Many thanks to CerealRipper for his original DVD9 post.