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 •

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.

Hooray for Hollywood! 1938 - 1940 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 5

The fifth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films.
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

View "Chapter 5: Hooray for Hollywood!"

Hooray for Hollywood!

Depression lingers. War looms. Fascism marches across Europe. And yet here we are, hobnobbing with socialites and hanging out with callous adventurers, giggling at pratfalls and whizzing along in car chases, playing with children's toys and fighting a war with Indians. We're dazzled by Robin Hood, hushed by a mythic Lincoln, and assaulted by the last of the dodos.

Concluding our survey of the thirties (or at least that sliver of it captured in my collection), we dive right into the thicket of Tinseltown. In this chapter, America dominates, and by America we mean Hollywood, and by Hollywood we mean movie stars, and by movie stars we mean Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn and, in particular, Cary Grant (that unseen third wheel in the picture above). A narrow view, to be sure, but aside from the contingencies of my control group (recent boxset purchases filled gaps while also creating imbalances), this focus can be justified by the desire to display, if only once, the glamorous allure of the silver screen unalloyed by its other appeals and values.