While I was at the Oregon Coast the postman delivered the DVD "Young Mr. Lincoln" I had ordered from Deep Discount DVD. The Movie was just released on DVD and I had not been able to located it at stores in Medford. The movie was released in 1939 , and was directed by my favorite director, John Ford. Henry Fonda plays Lincoln. I have seen the move before on TV but never without commercial interruption and the movie has been beautifully restored for this DVD release as part of The Criterion Collection. I highly recommend the film and this DVD.
Geoffry O' Brien in a review makes the following comments:
In Young Mr. Lincoln, John Ford achieves the perfection of his art....It is a masterpiece of concision in which every element in every shot, every ratio, every movement, every shift of viewpoint seems dense with significance, yet it breathes an air of casual impovisation..... The film radiates a youthful joy, while at the same time insistently implying that the hero's destiny--the moment when the weight of history becomes unavoidable-- will necessarily mean the loss of all joy.... Henry Fonda's remarkable performance is impossible to consider apart from Ford's framing of it...we are invited to indulge a naive lyricism....When Lincoln walks into history, he walks in a sense out of the world of John Ford's cinema..... Ford was rarely comfortable portraying great historical moments head-on.... What interest him is the freedom that exist outside of history, the freedom symbolized in its lighter aspect, by the fleeting pleasures of camaraderie and communal merrymaking that he love to linger on.
It's ironic I should watch this movie today. John Ford, whose parents came from Ireland loved the United States. This movie portrays a patriotism that is rare in movies today. It is an antidote for the anti Americanism found in many of the movies that will be "honored" tonight at the Academy Awards ceremony.
To read more about the movie click on the title above for a link to the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) page on Young Mr. Lincoln.
