Saw Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), a film by John Ford about Lincoln's career as a lawyer. Therefore, it's a court-room drama with sudden reveals and shouted confessions and judges shouting "Order! Order!" and so on. It's pretty stirring, but it doesn't seem to extend beyond the stirring climactic courtroom drama. If there are echoes and parallels to Lincoln's presidency, they are not obvious enough for me to pick up on, with my scant knowledge.
The film is the usual thing for John Ford: sentimental and big on the virtues of simple folks and simple values. Lincoln is portrayed as reading a lawbook lackadaisically, lying on his back by a river. It's very picturesque and twee. Thankfully, due to what Lincoln was like as a person, we don't get John Wayne or some other butch paragon out-manning everyone else. Instead we get a shy and awkward scarecrow, dressed in black, trying to break into politics but unable to enter a dance floor. It's endearing, even as Ford refuses to sell it that way.
I enjoyed that part of the film and I guess I enjoyed the whole film pretty well in general. Courtroom dramas are always pretty compelling. It would be nice if it had some kind of broader theme to draw about the comin civil war, but it does end with mounting storm clouds, and this is a better movie than I could have made. It was enough.
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