Young Mr. Lincoln

In his cinema, John Ford is not only a storyteller, but also a historian. Story, history, his story - triply united, interlocked, fused. No other filmmaker has been able to portray a historical monument like Abe Lincoln as cool, humorous, succinctly everyday and with a touching seriousness as John Ford in Young Mr Lincoln. Henry Fonda, as a not exactly well-heeled provincial lawyer and later US president, rides through a shimmering tableau of foliage, water and white wooden fences towards his first trial in Springfield as a tremendously phlegmatic Don Quixote in a skirt and top hat on a much too small mule. Legend in the present tense: a national hero with his hands in his pockets. Blessed with wit and laconic dignity, Young Mr Lincoln is the one and only film that Sergei Eisenstein wished, for good reason and in vain, to be the director of. (Harry Tomicek)

Introduction by Alexander Horwath on 7.12.2024

Photo: Austrian Film Museum