Episode 191 – John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln

In this episode, David Blakeslee, Scott Nye and Trevor Berrett discuss John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln, recently reissued by the Criterion Collection in a newly upgraded 4K restoration on Blu-ray and DVD.

Few American historical figures are as revered as Abraham Lincoln, and few director-star collaborations embody classic Hollywood cinema as beautifully as the one between John Ford and Henry Fonda. This film, their first together, was Ford’s equally poetic and significant follow-up to the groundbreaking western Stagecoach, and in it Fonda gives one of the finest performances of his career, as the young president-to-be, a novice lawyer struggling with an incendiary murder case. Photographed in gorgeous black and white by Ford’s frequent collaborator Bert Glennon, Young Mr. Lincoln is a compassionate and assured work and an indelible piece of Americana.

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PURCHASE THE FILM

HENRY FONDA ON YOUNG MR. LINCOLN

EPISODE LINKS

• Young Mr. Lincoln – The Criterion Collection
• Young Mr. Lincoln: Hero in Waiting – From the Current – The Criterion Collection
• New York Times (1939)
• Criterion Reflections
• CriterionCast Blu-ray Review
• Critics Roundup
• History on Film
• Through the Shattered Lens

EPISODE CREDITS

• David Blakeslee (Twitter / Criterion Reflections)
• Scott Nye (Twitter / Battleship Pretension)
• Trevor Berrett (Twitter / The Mookse and the Gripes)