Abraham Lincoln (1930)
1h 36m | PG-13
A biopic dramatizing Abraham Lincoln's life through a series of vignettes depicting its defining chapters: his romance with Ann Rutledge; his early years as a country lawyer; his marriage to Mary Todd; his debates with Stephen A. Douglas; the election of 1860; his presidency during the Civil War; and his assassination in Ford’s Theater in 1865.
Director: D.W. Griffith
Studio: Feature Productions
Genre: History, Drama
Video: 720p
Cast
Walter Huston
as Abraham Lincoln
Una Merkel
as Ann Rutledge
William L. Thorne
as Tom Lincoln
Lucille La Verne
as Mid-Wife
Helen Freeman
as Nancy Hanks Lincoln
Otto Hoffman
as Offut
Reviews
"Personally" directed by D. W. Griffith, this is a rather condensed version of the adult life of Abraham Lincoln. From his early life in the Kentucky backwoods where he grew up and his first love perished, through to his galvanising speech making, his election to the US Presidency followed by his decision to emancipate slaves eliciting a war that threatened his country with self-destruction before earning praise and enmity from his emergent and still divided nation. Walter Huston takes on the lead role and is about as wooden an actor as it's possible to get. Indeed, much of this looks and feels like it was a silent film with long, lingering, photography and a distinct paucity of dialogue until it livens up a bit towards the well documented denouement. Kay Hammond breathes a little life into affairs as his wife "Mary Todd" but for the most part this is a rather dry and all too adulatory, rose-tinted, biopic of a man we just don't have time to get to know as ninety minutes wings by. It's watchable, but really only as a "Janet and John" guide to this 13th President.