303 - Young Mr. Lincoln, United States, 1939. Dir. John Ford.

Monday, October 30, 2017

303 - Young Mr. Lincoln, United States, 1939.  Dir. John Ford.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Young Abraham Lincoln is talking to a lynch mob.  And he singles out Jeremiah Carter.  There's not a finer, more decent, God-fearing man in Springfield than Jeremiah Carter.  So says Mr. Lincoln.

He points out that when Mr. Carter goes home he will probably pick up a book and read those words.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Yet Mr. Carter is standing here, with all the others, trying to break down the Sangamon County Jail with a battering ram.  A tree trunk.  Trying to get to the Clay boys--Matt and Adam--who have just been accused and arrested for murder.  For the murder of Scrub White.

Scrub had been trying to come on to Matt's wife while at the Independence Day celebration.  Matt defended her honor.  Mrs. Clay, their mother, stepped in and asked Scrub to leave them alone.  They avoided a confrontation for awhile, but later in the night Scrub confronted Matt and started a fight.  They were fighting bare-handed, but Scrub started throwing rocks.  Then he pulled a gun.  Adam tried to help Matt wrestle the gun from Scrub.  One of them got Scrub in the heart with his knife.  The two brothers were trying to avoid a confrontation with a man who wanted nothing but trouble.  When pulled into it, they fought fairly.  He did not.  He attempted to kill them.  They responded in self-defense.  We saw it.  Mrs. Clay saw it.  But the townspeople did not see it.

And it only took a few moments for their emotions to spiral together into a tornado of impulsive and unsubstantiated mob justice.

You know. the kind  You may have recently indulged in it yourself on social media.

Regardless of your affiliations.

If you are honest with yourself.

One of the town locals has brought his rope, and he would feel let down if they went to all this trouble and did not get to have a hanging.

But Mr. Lincoln has stepped in the way, stood directly in the path of the log, and he is using his penchant for downhome reasoning to get through to them.

He announces that he is the boys' lawyer and he is not very good, so the town will probably get their hanging anyway.

But since he is just starting his law practice he needs them to give him a chance to get some experience.  If they remove his clients now, he will never have the opportunity to try his hand at defending them.

Furthermore, if they give them their day in court they can enjoy the fun of the legal show in addition to the fun of the hanging.

Yes, he uses the word fun.

Just before quoting scripture.

And he cuts them to the quick.

The townsmen drop their log and disperse.

Mrs. Clay looks on with teary-eyed amazement.

This man has just saved her sons' lives.

He stands framed alone in the doorway after the townsmen leave, and in that moment we realize we are watching a John Ford movie.

Doorways.

Frames.

Ford was warming up this motif for The Searchers (1956), which came seventeen years later.

Lincoln will stand in another doorway at the end of the film, after the trial is over and the crowds are calling for him to step out and see them.

Lincoln says he is just a jackleg lawyer.  Who keeps his office in his hat.  From a family that never amounted to a hill of beans.  And he can't dance.

But it turns out he can argue a case.

And he will in fact pull a miracle out of his hat.  Not a rabbit but an almanac.

And what is cited as a Biographical Drama turns out to be something else.

A Courtroom Drama.

With as much tension and surprise as Witness for the Prosecution (1957) or A Few Good Men (1992).

DO NOT read anything about this movie before watching it.

It is too satisfying to be ruined by an idiotic spoiler.

The film provides opportunities for some outstanding character actors to do their thing.  Donald Meek plays the prosecutor, John Felder.  Spencer Charters plays the Judge.  Ward Bond has a great role as one of the witnesses, J. Palmer Cass.  Our Gang's Dickie Moore plays Adam Clay as a boy.  And a young Milburn Stone from Gunsmoke plays a dashing Stephen A. Douglas.

Henry Fonda looks fantastic as Abraham Lincoln.

And mighty tall.  (He was only 6'1" but wore special boots.)

"We seem to lose our heads in times like this.

We do things together that we'd be mighty ashamed to do by ourselves."

"Law.  That's the rights of persons and the rights of things.

Wrongs are violations of those rights."