Review #282: 'Young Mr. Lincoln' (1939)

When young, intelligent store owner Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) exchanges some groceries for a law book, he becomes infatuated by it, and decides on a different career path. He arrives in the town of Springfield and co-runs a law firm, and although his techniques are a bit rough and maverick, he becomes well-renowned and respected. After staging an Independence Day parade, a murder takes place, in which two brothers apparently attack a man and stab him to death. Enchanted by the brothers' family's simple ways, and how they remind him of his own roots, he offers to take their defence.

While in France, movie-making was pushing the boundaries and were creating films that were more works of art than movies, America was making very American films (this is not a criticism, by the way, as America created some of their best pieces of work in the late 1930's and 40's). There was no more American a film-maker than the great John Ford, who was never more at home than when he was in the mythic Wild West, a place of beauty, violence and mysticism. And what more American story can there be other than the story of how one of the greatest Presidents in their short history came to be the man he was.

Ford had already fleetingly portrayed Lincoln in The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), showing his assassination at the beginning of the film, and then moving on to concentrate on the man accused of harbouring John Wilkes Booth. While that film portrayed the brutality that people are capable of, juxtaposed with a story of one-man's fierce determination, Young Mr. Lincoln shows the brutality of America, and how one man's fierce determination can overcome the odds and make a difference. The partially-fictionalised court case is based on the case of William 'Duff' Armstrong, a man accused of murder who was proven innocent by Lincoln, against a state that believed he was guilty.

Although Ford wisely chooses to keep the focus on Lincoln's early manhood rather than to fit in his entire life, the film is sill confined to the rules of the biopic. The film suffers by being episodic, shifting from Lincoln's early discovery of law, to his re-location, to the love interest, to the 'big event' that will define him (at this point in his life). Knowing Ford's gift for storytelling, the film is disappointingly simplistic in structure. It is however anchored by a very impressive Henry Fonda performance, whose appearance is uncanny to Lincoln, under some effective make-up. And, as you would expect, the cinematography is superb, and proves that no-one can capture America like John Ford.


Directed by: John Ford
Starring: Henry Fonda, Alice Brady, Marjorie Weaver
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie