Blogging By Cinema-light: Don't Make a Scene: Young Mr. Lincoln

Sunday, August 15, 2021

Don't Make a Scene: Young Mr. Lincoln

The Set-Up: Last week's "Don't Make a Scene" feature had an odd twist to it. It mentioned the Kubler-Ross model—the five stages of grieving. Those are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And, it's something I've been thinking about a lot, lately. I've been finding myself frustrated, even angry, at the turning of events the past few years and wondering what reaction that is. And after so much thinking and so much working through it, I finally figured out that it is grief.

I've been grieving...for the country, for the world, for the dead, for the stupid and intransigent. For all sorts of reasons. The world has turned into a Stanley Kubrick movie where smart people (or seemingly smart people) do really dumb things, all bumbling around in the K-M model like rats in a maze

And we're all paying for it. Both now and in the ever-warming future.

So, for the next few weeks, these Sunday Scenes are going to deal with grief in different forms, usually in the form of talking with the dead...or about the dead. I promise that none of them will have a high overhead shot looking down on somebody screaming to the camera a ragged "Nooooo!"

This scene from Young Mr. Lincoln might be seen as the acceptance phase, but not really. After all, the protagonist is still talking to the deceased. It's a one-way conversation in which a major decision is reached with the illusion that both parties have a hand in it. But, the young lawyer admits that the evidence might have been a little skewed.

This scene is preceded in the film by a summer conversation between Lincoln and Ann Rutledge and transitions with Abe throwing a rock into the river, the ripples reaching out and, with a picture fade, moving to the harsh reality of winter, the river now iced over and flowing slowly. Things have changed. Ann has died and she's buried in the same spot by the river where they'd had their previous talk.

She was the chatty one in the previous scene. Now, it's all him. But, he's just as deferential and respectful as he was before—he can't even touch the grave, just glides his hand over it, with no contact made. In death, as in life.

If you play the video below, you may notice that it pays particular attention to the music, credited to Alfred Newman, the same music plays in the summer scene, and in the winter scene, and will reappear in Washington D.C. as Abe stares out at a river. That music becomes associated with Ann Rutledge, Lincoln's lost love. Two decades later, director John Ford would pull it out of the archives and use it for another lost love in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The Story: Young Abe Lincoln (Henry Fonda) is looking for something better in life than the one he's leading in New Salem, Illinois. By chance, he's acquired a barrel of old books, traded by homesteaders for groceries on their trek West. He's been reading them and getting ideas. Big ideas. But, one thing that keeps him in place is Ann Rutledge (Pauline Moore), whom he's sweet on, despite her encouragements to follow his dreams and ambitions. Fate has other ideas.

Action.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Pretty, aren't they? Got 'em up at Bowling Green's place. You never saw anything like 'em in your life...

LINCOLN: ...sittin' there in the snow like scared rabbits. In fact, the woods are full of' em too.

LINCOLN: Snow's nice, ain't it, the way it's driftin'.

LINCOLN: Ice is breakin' up. It's comin' in to spring.

LINCOLN: Well, Ann, I'm still up a tree. Just can't seem to make up my mind what to do.

LINCOLN: Maybe I ought to go into the law, take my chances. I admit, I got kinda a taste... for somethin' different than this in my mouth.

LINCOLN: Still, I don't know. I'd feel such a fool... settin' myself up as a-knowin' so much.

LINCOLN: Course, I know what you'd say. I've been hearin' it every day, over and over again. "Go on, Abe. Make somethin' of yourself. You got friends. Show 'em what you got in ya".