(1939, John Ford) Henry Fonda’s Abraham Lincoln loves and loses Ann Rutledge, studies law, runs his first
political race, meets Mary Todd and Stephen A. Douglas, and takes on a climactic murder trial at the behest
of family friend Alice Brady — with its solution found in a farmer’s almanac. Approx. 100 min.
1:00, 4:35, 8:05
“Abraham Lincoln looms with such monumentality in the American imagination -- even as he pervades our lives and wallets -- that a human-scale movie version of the great man seems near impossible. Yet imagine a recognizable, life-size Lincoln is precisely what John Ford did...
his direction remains sure from lyrical start to foreboding end. An astonishment of pictorial beauty and dramatic force.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Click here to read entire article.
“UNFORGETTABLE! Has a place in cinema history.”
– Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
Click here to read entire article.
“Ford's mythologizing has seldom seemed stronger or more subtle.
A MASTERPIECE.”
– Dave Kehr
“A beautiful and surprisingly humane biopic.”
– The San Francisco Examiner
“Today it commands classic status. Composed of serio-comic scenes from small town life, heavy with a future perfect sense
of Myth-in-the-making,
it's riven by tensions between insignificance and monumentality that explode in the histrionic splendour
and 'excess' of the celebrated final sequence.”
– Time Out (London)
“Deeply moving. Extraordinarily subtle even as it looks direct and simple.” – Derek Malcolm, The Guardian
“John Ford achieves the perfection of his art. A masterpiece of concision in which every element in every shot, every ratio, every movement, every shift of viewpoint seems dense with significance, yet it breathes an air of casual improvisation. Ford finds a mood that avoids the clutter
and ponderousness of most Hollywood history movies, a mood more of parable than of textbook chronicle.”
– Geoffrey O’Brien
Click here to read Sergei Eisenstein's Young Mister Lincoln fan letter to John Ford [pdf]
(1951, Anthony Mann) On board Lincoln’s inauguration-bound
train, freelancing NYC cop Dick Powell (character name: John
Kennedy!) teams up with Union officer Adolphe Menjou to foil an
assassination plot—or does he? “A Noir mini-masterpiece. Sinewy
camera movement, elegantly modulated rhythms, and arresting
paranoia.” – Fernando F. Croce, Slant. Approx. 78 min.
3:00, 6:30, 10:00
“A GRIPPING PICTURE OF A NATION ON THE BRINK. The exotic genre alone is a joy—a historical film noir, set in 1861, largely aboard a train, and centered on a plot against President-elect Lincoln’s life—and the director Anthony Mann fleshes it out with vigorous and subtle attention to its disparate elements, political, psychological, and brutal...keeping the engine rolling at top speed. One rapid, silent shot of sudden nocturnal menace is an all-time anthology piece.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Click here to read entire article.
“A gem of a thriller: Ingenious and inventive… dashes along at a furious pace.”
– Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)
“A noir mini-masterpiece. Sinewy camera movement, elegantly modulated rhythms, and arresting paranoia.”
– Fernando F. Croce, Slant
“A paranoid, action-packed, atmospheric thriller directed by noir and western specialist Anthony Mann, and densely plotted,
there’s all kinds of nasty skullduggery on this eventful train ride. There’s no musical score, salty period dialogue,
and wonderful black and white cinematography by Paul C. Vogel, full of steam, shiny rails, and claustrophobic enclosures."
– Jonathan Rosenbaum
“Mann generates suspense from a story that logically shouldn't have any –
he understands that mood is more important than plausibility in a thriller, and you could cut the mood here with a knife.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
“I tried to do a Hitchcock with The Tall Target… an exercise in high voltage." – Anthony Mann
“A real Mann treasure, a blueprint for the modern American action movie.” – American Cinematheque
“Mann had an uncanny knack for taking rote B-grade flicks and transforming them into minor masterpieces.” – Reverse Shot
