Henry Fonda IS Atticus Finch IN Young Mr. Lincoln! Seriously, if this movie wasn't made a good twenty-one years before Harper Lee's multimedia sensation, I would swear that John Ford's film was just a slightly reworked version of To Kill a Mockingbird, the director… More
Henry Fonda IS Atticus Finch IN Young Mr. Lincoln! Seriously, if this movie wasn't made a good twenty-one years before Harper Lee's multimedia sensation, I would swear that John Ford's film was just a slightly reworked version of To Kill a Mockingbird, the director dropping the whole childhood angle and the racism polemic while subbing in Ford's Lincoln for Gregory Peck; but as it happens, this film was made in 1939 (at which point Lee would have been thirteen and likely not in the habit of writing novels), and the events portrayed herein were based (very, VERY loosely, I should point out) on an actual case worked by Lincoln during his years as an attorney- the most famous criminal case of his career. Truthfully, I wasn't going in to a film called Young Mr. Lincoln expecting a courtroom drama, but once you get past the rote trappings of a biopic, that's what this movie is; and sure, they fudge a few facts here and there, but this IS a Hollywood production, you know. In fact, all the old troupes from the silver age of cinema are there: cartoonishly evil villains, saintly, blameless heroes, cheesy blue-collar comic relief, and the triumph of good ol' common sense morality over the ambiguous, fallible established system. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you. Ford is a purveyor of classic Hollywood storytelling, and Young Mr. Lincoln is an example of the better work from this era. Actually, it kind of reminds me of Frank Capra's work (since it's not in Ford's traditional milieu, the western), but the difference comes down to the characters: Capra characters, at some point before the end of the story, are always overcome with tremendous self-doubt and angst, which is usually the biggest obstacle that they inevitably overcome; Ford characters, on the other hand, have total faith in themselves up to the very end, and the dramatic complications in his films come from the circumstances, not the people. Actually, it's ironic that Abraham Lincoln would be one of those characters, considering that, during the Civil War, he doubted and examined his actions ceaselessly- maybe that's why Ford chose not to show us the presidential Lincoln, but the confident, if humble, young man who would grow to earn the office.
In one of the most perfect casting choices anyone could possibly have come up with, Henry Fonda plays the young Mr. Lincoln, his slight resemblance to the great man enhanced by deliberate lighting choices and the judicious application of shadowing make-up. As I said, he's kind of a proto-Atticus Finch character, but on the other hand Lincoln isn't quite as solemn as Mr. Finch, because he doesn't have the luxury; in the film, Lincoln can only command the attention of the slack-jawed idiots he's tasked with swaying the minds of through his country-spun sense of humor, getting on the good side of a lynch mob at one point by joking that, if they hang the accused, he'll have no client to defend in court, and that he's such a novice that he needs the practice. Fonda has a tremendous amount of presence as the character; his Lincoln is a soft-spoken, thoughtful man, and often the best moments in his performance are the quiet ones in which we sense the wheels turning behind his inscrutable expression. As for the rest of the cast... well, no one really stood out to me. There were the brothers that were accused of murder who didn't do much of anything and had a grand total of three lines between them for the latter half of the movie; there was the respective girlfriend and wife of the two accused who both look all sad and fearful for most of the movie; there's also the two brothers' mother, who saw the whole thing and has to go through the incredibly trite dilemma of choosing which of the two will live, and which will die; there's Donald Meek, a guy I've seen in a bunch of classic cinema, as the prosecutor, a Mr. Potter-type (It's a Wonderful Life Potter, not Harry) whom Lincoln befuddles to the amusement of the crowd; another oldie regular, Ward Bond (who actually <i>was</i> in It's a Wonderful Life), plays J. Palmer Cass, friend to the deceased and the only other eyewitness, who is subjected to Lincoln's famous use of an almanac to discredit his testimony; and for some reason unfathomable to me, Pauline Moore plays Ann Rutledge, Lincoln's first fiance, for one whole scene- after which (in fact, in the very next scene) she is very dead, and serves no further use to the plot.
The script is a little... awkward. It starts like a biopic, then slows <i>way</i> down once Lincoln becomes a lawyer, and inexplicably turns into a courtroom melodrama halfway through its run time. Furthermore, the details of the actual case the film's based on have been pretty blatantly altered for dramatic purposes. For one thing, there was only one defendant in the original case, not two; his mother did NOT have to testify against him; Lincoln was asked to take the case by a friend- he didn't just take it because "it was the right thing to do"; the murder weapon was a blackjack, not a knife; and, oh yeah, the defendant ACTUALLY COMMITTED THE CRIME. There was no elaborate frame-job. Lincoln didn't pull out a last-minute revelation of the killer's true identity. He defended a man whose culpability for the crime he committed was questionable (today we'd call it "manslaughter" or "self-defense"), and he did it by raising that one thing that juries are supposed to look for during a trial: reasonable doubt. This being a Hollywood production, however, moral ambiguity was a big no-no, so instead we get an ending that ties everything up in a neat little bow, then slathers it with dreadfully overwrought patriotism. Thankfully John Ford was the man behind the camera, and he gives the film a light touch that makes the bits of banality easier to stomach. The black and white cinematography serves to remind the viewer of old photographs from the time, and like I said, the lighting choices are carefully made to emphasize Fonda's resemblance to Honest Abe. My only complaint is that the costumers put him in the stovepipe hat too often. Did he really wear the thing that much? It comes off as a little cheeseball.
While it probably wouldn't be counted as one of John Ford's finest accomplishments as a filmmaker, or among the most memorable performances of Henry Fonda (if only because he's done so many great ones), Young Mr. Lincoln was a perfect fit for the talents of both men. It's a slice of pure Americana, both in its subject matter and its execution; a more perfect illustration of the strengths and weaknesses of American cinema at the time would be hard to find. And while it may not be the most historically accurate or entirely serious depiction of the past that Hollywood would come to crank out over the years, Young Mr. Lincoln is a solid piece of movie-going entertainment put together by one of the old masters of cinematic storytelling. And for God's sake, it's Henry Fonda as Abraham Lincoln! It doesn't get any more epic than that.
