Please note: This was screened in July 2025
Few American historical figures are as revered as Abraham Lincoln, and few American directors are as revered as John Ford.
By 1939, the year of Young Mr. Lincoln’s release, Ford was already immortalised as the chronicler of a fading American frontier through the likes of The Iron Horse (1924) and Stagecoach (1939). Subject matter and filmmaker are perfectly synergised in this sweeping biographical account of the iconic American President, Ford bringing his characteristic lyricism and visual poetry to humanise the man behind the iconography.
Young Mr. Lincoln was the first collaboration between Ford and actor Henry Fonda, and the latter lends a taciturn yet empathetic quality to his portrayal of the lawyer turned politician who would change America forever.
Filmed in lustrous black and white by Bert Glennon to the accompaniment of an elegiac score from Alfred Newman (the love theme from which would be reconstituted in later Ford movies), the film remains one of Ford’s indelible achievements. In 2003, Young Mr. Lincoln was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".