NR | 1h 40m | Drama | 1939
In 1830s Illinois, when Lincoln’s first love Ann Rutledge (Pauline Moore) dies, he follows her advice: A sensible, self-educated man like him ought to set out and make a name for himself. He leaves New Salem for Springfield to set up a law practice. There, following Independence Day festivities, he lands his first client, Abigail Clay (Alice Brady), who was about to lose her adult sons Matt (Richard Cromwell) and Adam (Eddie Quillan) to the gallows.
Scoundrel Scrub White (Fred Kohler Jr.) has succumbed to a stabbing in a scuffle. White’s buddy Palmer Cass (Ward Bond) stirs a mob against Mrs. Clay’s sons. Having already befriended the Clays, Lincoln suspects they’re innocent. He silences and then scatters the mob that’s itching for a hanging. It isn’t enough. The prosecution lawyer argues against the now-arrested brothers, but only two witnesses seem credible. Cass says that Matt’s the killer, and Mrs. Clay won’t say which son wielded the knife. Lincoln must find another way to prove they’re innocent, or they’ll hang.
Two inches shorter than the 6-foot-4-inch-tall historical Lincoln, Fonda’s lanky frame and high hat-top elevate his onscreen persona even higher. Cinematographer Bert Glennon’s lighting makes it look like the clean-shaven Lincoln bears a beard. He even accentuates the sunken look of his eyes.
In the young man, you see the sage who is to come. Fonda’s calming voice works in every scene, tender or taut. His unhurried gait prefigures the simmering wisdom that would become a Lincoln hallmark. Shut off the volume while watching; it’s as if Fonda’s in slow motion and everyone else is in real time.
Lamar Trotti’s screenplay secured an Oscar nomination. To him, Lincoln’s wisdom overrides the street smarts of his peers just as King Solomon’s wisdom superseded the knowledge of his peers. Lincoln may have started out as a lawyer, but like Solomon, he was destined to be a judge—not just of law but of men and matters.
Wisdom Above Knowledge
Solomon prayed for the ability to discern between right and wrong so he could govern with justice. Lincoln’s extensive reading of the law boiled down to his simple dictum about right and wrong. He scolds the prosecution lawyer: “I may not know much of law … but I know what’s right … what’s wrong.”Lincoln is involved invariably in the thick of things. But he’s also a spectator, seeing what others can’t or won’t. Friend Mary Todd (Marjorie Weaver)—silently—watches him when they’re on a balcony together, first from nearby and then from a distance. He’s the perpetual outsider, dispassionate, but at no time any less an empathetic insider. It’s why his humor is so disarming. For, what is humor but the ability to see differently?
To Trotti, lawyers, jurors, and judges must be sufficiently knowledgeable about the law but adequately distanced from it to acknowledge the human side of events and experiences. Lincoln’s saying that if the law’s drafted by imperfect humans, it can’t but be imperfect. It must be upheld with a lightness of touch, with humility, not hubris.
Lincoln is Trotti’s Christlike figure, hinting at the arbitrariness of man’s law and defending those deserving a higher justice. Instead of a mob bent on stoning by the law of Moses, here’s a mob bent on hanging by the law of the State of Illinois. They sheepishly disperse when Lincoln addresses their conscience, God’s law imprinted in their hearts and minds: “We do things together that we’d be mighty ashamed to do by ourselves.” He frees them from a narrow reading of the law. It must serve them, not the other way around. After all, the Sabbath is for man, not man for the Sabbath.
The Lincoln Memorial depicts Lincoln’s dualistic interiority: One giant palm is open as if at peace with the facts, but another’s clenched as if shunning anything short of the truth. One foot’s ahead as if conjuring a freer future that doesn’t yet exist, and another foot’s behind as if treasuring the shade of a righteously restrained past. Nearly a century ago, Fonda’s beanpole-like legs walked the screen depicting that same dualistic interiority.
