YOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939)
One of the most famous lines from any John Ford movie is, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Not great advice for a reporter, but Ford got away with in this picture, which isn't a straight biopic but a romantic fantasy about the pre-fame Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) as we'd like to imagine it. The movie's script does have a basis in history: the story is built around a murder trial that young Abe took on as a fledgling lawyer. The movie uses this set-up to provide Fonda with the chance to show Lincoln demonstrating his folksy sagacity, his humor, his basic decency and the canniness that would make him a successful politician, but in embryonic form, as a young leading man learning the ropes on his way to becoming a legend. He may not know, as we know, that he's the great Abraham Lincoln. But as we see him figuring out that he has that in him, the movie elevates patriotic corn to the level of folk poetry.
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