Cinema Mishmash

A personal and random look at movies, past and present

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Abraham Lincoln

February 21st, 2009 · No Comments

Abraham Lincoln is one of only two “talkies” directed by a giant of the silent era, D.W. Griffith, a man who is credited with 535 films (although due to the technology and convention of filmmaking at the time, most of them are technically “shorts”). I’m no scholar of Griffith, but like most people associate him with Birth of a Nation and that film’s overt racism. Griffith’s ideology is likely more complicated (he abrahamlincolnfollowed Birth of a Nation in 1915 with a film called Intolerance in 1916), and the contemporary idea of director as auteur (that is, one whose work reflects his personal voice, like that of an author) was not the way films were interpreted in Griffith’s time. Regardless, I can’t help but question the unflattering way that both Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln are portrayed here. The film suggests that Lincoln is a bit of a backwoods buffoon, whose path toward the national political stage is the result of more sophisticated men (the leaders of the Republican Party) and the grit of his ruthless and rude wife. The acting, visual, and narrative style of the film is still that of the silent era, and adds to the intrigue of this work’s place among the varying interpretations of a man whose history and myth still retain power today. While the iconic image of Lincoln can be found here, one must look past both the eye makeup and the actors’ hammy, emotionally overwrought delivery.  And if I’m right that the film is unnecessarily unkind to its subject, the final sequence of the film, beginning with the assassination and ending with an angelically lit push into the Lincoln Memorial, is the equivalent of thematic whiplash, leaving Lincoln firmly, if not literally, on his historical pedestal.

Tags: Biographical · Capsule · Drama

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