Young Mr. Lincoln

[Martin Fass]

I most appreciate these remarks and observations; thank you. One can have (and many DO have) strong criticism of the John Ford film, and of various other Lincoln characterizations. It is important to note, however, that writers, directors and actors have not always had the objectives we might assume they had, or that we believe they OUGHT to have had.

It is also somewhat impossible to know how we, ourselves, might have experienced a movie (or a book) if we had come upon it ten or fifty years earlier than we have. At the same time, it is valuable to see how the Ford movie was originally reviewed in the New York Times. As with other pictures, this one is not the same film at all when we look at it now, especially if we are familiar (and love--or not love) all the work that Ford and Fonda did (alone and together) in the next few decades.

--Martin