Historic?

Young Mr Lincoln (1939)

John Ford directs Henry Fonda in this fictionalised biography of the early years of Abraham Lincoln, the plot largely focuses on Lincoln's most notable trial as a defence lawyer. This film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” so it has a fairly big reputation to live up to straight off the bat.

Taken purely as a piece of entertainment this is a fairly decent film, the trial is pretty interesting and on the whole the characters are well crafted and face some tough moral choices. However we have to wonder how reliable what we are shown is from a historical point of view as key facts about the trial have been changed for the film.

As a biography for Lincoln I found this film to be a real let down. While the movie does give a snap shot of the type of person Lincoln was it does miss out huge swathes of his life and that stuff would be really interesting. There is no depiction of the failure of his first business, how he goes from being largely self educated to being a lawyer and nothing showing his first foray into politics. From this film you get the idea that Lincoln is a good orator but it is really hard to say how he went from being a small town shop keeper to the president of his country.

I give this a 3/5 but only just, a real missed opportunity in my opinion.