Young Mr. Lincoln. “Young Mr. Lincoln” is a film by D. Ford, which is a completely fictional narrative about the life of an American president, covered with legends and myths, the director tries to create a generalized image that personifies the heroic past of the United States, an idealized view of the country about itself.
The central concept in the film is Lincoln’s legal literacy and at the same time his democracy, personal openness to the life needs of ordinary Americans. Creating their collective portrait, Ford works within the framework of popular Hollywood cinema performances, in fine and accurate details playing the vital flavor of rural workers, their expressive texture.
Shooting a monofilm focused on a single character, the director turns the secondary characters into a single background that opposes Lincoln or approves of his statements. Without knowing it, Ford is forming a canon of correct behavior of the American politician, which has become a template for many generations of the US elite, including Barack Obama. Unlike his epigones, the character of the film is sincere in serving the people, his figure and simplicity in communication radiates some metaphysical harmony, scenes near the river express pantheistic unity with the world.
Perhaps a certain goodness, naivety of intonation lowers the level of conflict content, gives it softer, more smoothly than we are used to, although outwardly we are facing a judicial conflict, the clarification of the guilt of suspects, which in the cinema often becomes material for an action narrative, but not for Ford, who prefers to pay more attention to impressionistic details than drama.
Preferring static general plans, scenes shot from one point, immobilizing the camera as much as possible, the director makes the image more theatrical, in full-scale episodes acquiring similarity with painting. Of the filmmakers, the source of inspiration for Ford was, without a doubt, J. Renoir, first of all his “Country Walk”, praising the unity of man with nature, in this continuity – the source of the soft lyricism of “Young Mr. Lincoln”. The clarification of the truth in court acquires special drama in the scene of the interrogation of the mother, acquiring the features of a Solomonian parable, in it the director somewhat emotionally inflates the intonation, giving her melodramatic, sentimental overtones.
Seventy-five years later, the film looks incredibly fresh, its rhythm does not look slow, the naivety of the atmosphere and smoothed conflict give it a special charm of folk legend, the play of G. Fonda demonstrates the richness of his acting abilities in the quest to create a positive, but not sweet, multidimensional portrait. J. Loursell compared this image with the sphinx, radiating mystery and esoteric knowledge, it is difficult to disagree with him, because as a result, Ford shot a picture that largely manifests the mystery of political charisma, perhaps this is the source of its ageless charm.