Before he became the Abraham Lincoln…

Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), dir. John Ford, w/ Henry Fonda (Abraham Lincoln), Marjorie Weaver (Mary Todd), Alice Brady (Abigail Clay), Donald Meek (John Felder), Ward Bond (John Palmer Cass).

Henry Fonda would tell the story of his first meeting with John Ford, when he was being considered for this role.  He had appeared on the stage and in a few films, but it would be this film that would really be his breakthrough.  When told he was being considered for the role, Fonda balked — he was no Lincoln — this was too big a role for him.  Ford apparently was quite curt with him and roundly cussed him out, noting that he wasn’t asking Fonda to play the Great Emancipator, but some jack-leg lawyer on his first real case.

The film details Lincoln’s brief relationship with Ann Rutledge, supposedly the one true love in his life, in New Salem, IL and his move to Springfield to start a law practice.  When some visitors to the county fair are accused of killing a local man, Lincoln signs on to be their lawyer.  The film makes use of Fonda’s own “aw, shucks” quality to suggest Lincoln’s own rather quiet and self-effacing ways.

The film is one of the great classics, and probably is one of the five best films Ford made (and Ford had a tremendous career).  It is marred a little by the poorly masked sound stage that serves as the camp site, and that closes the film, where Lincoln walks off to the top of a hill, as storm clouds gather in the distance.

Aside from this, the story and the great cast, including Donald Meek in a much greater role than he usually has in Ford films as Lincoln’s opponent, the prosecutor John Felder.  Fonda, of course, largely embodies the later Lincoln shifted back to his roots.  He is great at presenting Lincoln’s use of irony which often has the court in stitches, at the expense of the prosecutor and his chief witness, Palmer Cass, a dislikable lout played by Ward Bond.  But the truly memorable scenes would include the murder, where Ford captures the confusion of the scene, even though we witness the act, and where Lincoln stops the crowd that has formed a lynch mob from grabbing his clients — that scene is easily the equal of the memorable scene in which Gregory Peck stops a similar mob at the county jail in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Despite its visible flaws, this is truly a great film and well worth seeing.