The Favorites - Young Mr. Lincoln (#24)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Young Mr. Lincoln (1939/USA/dir. John Ford) appeared at #24 on my original list.

What it is • An obscure Illinois lawyer in the 1830s named Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) takes on a court case involving two brothers from a poor family (Richard Cromwell and Eddie Quillan), who have been accused of murder. This will be his first criminal trial, and it will force him to face down a lynch mob and move back and forth across several divides: between the isolated family he's defending and the solid community opposed to them, between the common folk who appreciate his good humor and the local elite who admire his intelligence, and between his own idealistic appeals to higher principles and his shrewd ability to employ emotional manipulation. We meet Lincoln before he's even chosen the law as a vocation, watching as he loses his fiancee Ann Rutledge (Pauline Moore) and meets his future wife Mary Todd (Marjorie Weaver). However, this is not the sort of biopic where we collect the "greatest hits" of a lifetime - it's very much focused on a single period and issue, much like Patton, Selma, or, well, Lincoln. Unlike those films, however, its key incident isn't a momentous turning point in the subject's legend but a much smaller moment, highly fictionalized (the screenplay by Lamar Trotti adapts a key detail from an actual Lincoln case, but it occurred many years later when he was already a national figure, and the circumstances were mostly very different). Perhaps this is what gives the movie its extra edge: the proceedings are allowed to be both laid back and subtly symbolic (Lincoln is encouraged to split the brothers' defense in order to save one, which only now occurs to me as a likely "house divided" nod). Just like Lincoln himself, the film is deceptively low-key in approach while slowly summoning up a deep sense of grandeur and gravity.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - The Searchers (#27)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Searchers (1956/USA/dir. John Ford) appeared at #27 on my original list.

What it is • Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) returns to his brother's homestead in Texas after a stint in the Confederate Army...three years after the Civil War has ended (Wikipedia picks up on clues that he spent that extra time fighting against the French interventionists and Emperor Maximillian in Mexico). In other words, he is established right away as a rootless wanderer, most notably in the infamous opening shot of a woman opening a door out into the wide open plains, shielding her eyes from the light as a figure rides up on a horse. The ending mirrors this shot, with Ethan turning to walk off the porch and back out into the wilderness as everyone else gathers inside, the door framing his exit as a retreat from civilization. The framing device might suggest that he remains at home in the interim, an oasis of domesticity in a life of exile, but the title gives the game away: Ethan is actually wandering for almost the entire film. There is a difference to the time the film covers: Ethan is searching, not just drifting at random. His very clear goal is to track a Comanche chief (Henry Brandon) so he can avenge the rape and murder of his brother's family and find - perhaps "mercy-kill" - his kidnapped niece (played by siblings Lana and Natalie Wood, as a child and adolescent, respectively). Ethan is a mess of conflicting impulses and signifiers: redeemer of virtue and revenge-obsessed madman, tender uncle and bigoted/misogynist hater of race-mixing, stalwart defender of white civilization and outcast from that same civilization. The movie both embodies classical western forms and subtly subverts them, drawing on the genre conventions that Ford and Wayne helped create while pointing toward the revisionist decades to come. Receiving decent reviews and perhaps turning a modest profit, The Searchers proceeded to disappear for a while; it didn't get much distribution and other Ford films were more frequently celebrated. By the seventies, however, most notably in Taxi Driver, the film had become one of the most influential works of American cinema. Its tough-guy antihero not only shaped the lonely, angry protagonists of New Hollywood but - directly or indirectly - the brooding men of cable TV's Golden Age. In terms of psychological impact alone, it has certainly earned its consistent place as the most acclaimed western of all time.

Why I like it •

Fragments of Cinephilia, Pt. VI

Short thoughts on: Stanley Kramer • Howard Hawks • Vivre sa vie • Anatomy of a Murder • John Ford • The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Mouchette • Young Mr. Lincoln • Ordet • Jules and Jim

Here we are with another collection of IMDb comments, my sixth in about as many years (albeit my second in two months, so maybe you can expect more in the near future). As we move back in time, here we reach the period where I was really posting on those board prolifically, watching many movies and eager to share my thoughts in the primary forum I used at the time. While the previous (or should I say, chronologically, next?) round-up featured a lot of European films, here I seem to be at least as much focused on American classics. What do you think of these movies? Do you agree/disagree with my judgments? Since this was almost a decade ago, I'm not sure how frequently I concur with my conclusions, but it is interesting to revisit these earlier opinions.

They Were Expendable, A Canterbury Tale, & Hail the Conquering Hero

Watching three films from 1944-45 back to back to back I was struck by World War II cinema's variety of flavors. Hail the Conquering Hero, an all-American Preston Sturges comedy, takes place far from the battlefield, on the homefront where all eyes are on a war which remains somehow elusive, even imaginary. They Were Expendable, on the other hand, is mired in the muck of war; it's one of John Ford's most Hawksian films, the male camaraderie (even featuring a "one of the guys" tough gal, played by Donna Reed) mostly untouched by sentimentality or mythologizing. Meanwhile, Powell and Pressburger, that eccentrically flamboyant yet surprisingly un-escapist duo, negotiate between these two spheres. A Canterbury Tale is set on a "home front" which is also at times a battlefield, a British countryside fundamentally transformed by modern warfare, with its troop transports, blackouts, and women at work. Together, the three films convey a fascinating triptych view of how movies presented the war while it was still unfolding.

The Searchers

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

Usually when we say a film starts "in medias res" we mean that we're plopped right down in the midst of action, with the plot already begun. That's not the case in The Searchers, which follows a conventional story arc. Beginning with Ethan Edwards' arrival at his brother's homestead, the film waits the requisite ten or twenty minutes before introducing the "inciting incident" in screenwriting terms: a Comanche attack on Ethan's relatives, killing the parents and son, raping the older daughter, and kidnapping the little girl. Only after this does the central action of the story begin, with Ethan and his part-Indian stepnephew, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter) trailing the Comanche war party for five years, hoping to either rescue little Debbie or put her out of her perceived misery, as her teenage years will bring a dreaded miscegenation. Then the movie follows an episodic course, cutting between accounts of Ethan's and Martin's hunt and the "homefront" where Laurie Jorgensen (Vera Miles) pines after Martin and considers her other options. So no, The Searchers doesn't start "in the middle of things" as that Latin phrase would have it and yet in a sense it does: a whole world, historical, social, psychological, stretches out before the film even begins and the movie itself almost seems like the tip of the iceberg floating on waters which conceal its vast depths but let us imagine what lies beneath.

Remembering the Movies, Feb. 18 - 24

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

The shark has pretty teeth, dear - and with the above image the "bad guy" theme continues for yet another week. I've cheated this week too: as happens occasionally, I overlooked a movie a few weeks ago when it would have been eligible. Usually I'm able to include a given film on the date of another premiere/wider release if I accidentally miss it on its very first screening date. In this case, however, there was nothing I could do. So for hopefully the last time, the 1951 film is actually several weeks old but has been included because it deserved a spot on February 7. Apologies to all the anal Remembering-the-Movie-watchers out there. I promise to get it right next time.

Remembering the Movies, Nov. 12 - 18

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

First off, a note of mourning. Since this series began I have been linking up every 1990 release to a "Siskel & Ebert" review. Watching those old programs had been one of the highlights of "Remembering the Movies" for me - well, lo and behold, this week when I look up Rescuers Down Under the link is broken. Turns out (irony of ironies, given the movie in question) that the D****y Corporation decided to take down the archives for no apparent reason. Which of course breaks all the links on my previous entries as well (luckily I included quotes from those shows in my text). So R.I.P. "At the Movies," and cross your fingers for the archives to go back up when a new edition of the show begins in January. A discussion of the circumstances of the deletion can be found here, along with pointers to where 80s episodes can be found. Almost makes you wish Stokowski was giving the Mouse the finger instead of shaking his goddamned hand.

Another important subject, on which I hope to hear some feedback...

Starting next week, I would like to simplify "Remembering the Movies" so that it consists of the titles of the releases, multiple pictures for each movie, embedded video clips, and maybe some quotes from critics or historians (in other words, the information I'm already presenting, just unfiltered and un-paraphrased, and without my own opinion or prior knowledge mixed in - and also less frequent, as some entries would be pictures/videos only). The paragraphs and story summaries would be axed; the result would be less exploratory than expository (but also more colorful and quicker to take in). I think this would still deliver what readers get from the series - i.e. a walk through movie history - while making the posts easier for me to prepare (the current approach is frankly too time-consuming to continue). In order to still write something, I might pick one film a week and write up a capsule review. Otherwise, it will be a mostly visual approach.

Share your thoughts on this new plan below - lurkers, that means you too! As I cut down on blogging in the coming weeks and months, your response will help determine if "Remembering the Movies," in one form or another, is something I preserve.

This week's films - with the customary paragraphs, information, quotations, and links - follow the jump.

Remembering the Movies, Oct. 8 - 14

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

(visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past)

Today we see an odd confluence of the soft and the tough. Among characters, a boxer isolated in his wounded pride, a couple cons with hearts of gold, and a brittle actress whose throwaway lines betray tenderness and vulnerability. Among films? Superficially sappy stories imbued with a sense of death or despair, wartime dramas with a streak of sentimentality, sharp movies subjected to even sharper criticism, and the odd picture that's all one thing - a fluffy feel-good 80s/90s American parable on the one hand, and a severe 50s/60s Japanese social critique on the other. And we haven't even mentioned an unsuspectingly jovial comedian, on the cusp of becoming one of Hollywood's most tragic figures.

Share your thoughts below, and fasten your seatbelts...