This was John Ford's entertaining if typically highly fanciful and sentimentalised dramatisation of the fledgling years of America's greatest president. I couldn't for a moment believe that many, if indeed any of the events in the movie happened as depicted here, but once you grant Hollywood the licence it usually took with bio-pics of historical figures, it's best to accept it more as entertainment than lesson.
Thus, right from the start, Ford plays up "Honest Abe's" virtues of strength, piety, common-sense and integrity and finds the perfect actor to embody them with Henry Fonda. Fonda drawls his way through the part, in a way very similar to that of another stoical American legend he would portray in a later Ford classic, Wyatt Earp in "My Darling Clementine", right down to his chair-balancing trick and awkward turn at dancing.
The central story of Lincoln's defence of two country boys on trial for the killing of a local bully effectively gives Fonda the chance to grandstand the great man's best attributes at an extended courtroom scene, although for my tastes, Ford overdoes does the the small- town schmaltz, right down to the judge sleeping during testimony, laughing aloud at Lincoln's humorous asides and most of all at Donald Meek's Victorian villain prosecuting counsel.
There's more corn too in Lincoln's interaction with the "good old country folk" he defends where we see Ford's again trademark idealisation of maternal figures, the way that "Super-Abe" defuses a potential lynching by standing in front of the mob's battering ram and delivering some home-spun homilies, as well as the numerous times the camera pauses on Fonda's profile to reinforce Lincoln's destiny, particular his framing on top of the hill in the pouring rain in the final scene before the dissolve to the shot of the Lincoln memorial.
Carping aside, it was still a highly enjoyable story, well shot and edited, with a fine performance by the young Fonda in the title role. A bit too sickly sweet for my tastes but in the final analysis, Ford builds his monument well.
Thus, right from the start, Ford plays up "Honest Abe's" virtues of strength, piety, common-sense and integrity and finds the perfect actor to embody them with Henry Fonda. Fonda drawls his way through the part, in a way very similar to that of another stoical American legend he would portray in a later Ford classic, Wyatt Earp in "My Darling Clementine", right down to his chair-balancing trick and awkward turn at dancing.
The central story of Lincoln's defence of two country boys on trial for the killing of a local bully effectively gives Fonda the chance to grandstand the great man's best attributes at an extended courtroom scene, although for my tastes, Ford overdoes does the the small- town schmaltz, right down to the judge sleeping during testimony, laughing aloud at Lincoln's humorous asides and most of all at Donald Meek's Victorian villain prosecuting counsel.
There's more corn too in Lincoln's interaction with the "good old country folk" he defends where we see Ford's again trademark idealisation of maternal figures, the way that "Super-Abe" defuses a potential lynching by standing in front of the mob's battering ram and delivering some home-spun homilies, as well as the numerous times the camera pauses on Fonda's profile to reinforce Lincoln's destiny, particular his framing on top of the hill in the pouring rain in the final scene before the dissolve to the shot of the Lincoln memorial.
Carping aside, it was still a highly enjoyable story, well shot and edited, with a fine performance by the young Fonda in the title role. A bit too sickly sweet for my tastes but in the final analysis, Ford builds his monument well.