The Lincoln Cycle 4: My First Jury. - The Lincoln Cycle 5: Tender Memories

The Lincoln Cycle 5: Tender Memories. The President visits the front of the Civil War.

The Lincoln Cycle. The boy Abraham (Charlie Jackson) is taught to write by his mother Nancy Hanks (Madelyn Clare).

Series credits see The Lincoln Cycle.
US 1917
Benjamin Chapin, [John M. Stahl]. DCP
28’35’’
28’53’’
Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM).
Grand piano and violin: Günter Buchwald
Viewed at Teatro Verdi, Pordenone (John M. Stahl), 9 Oct 2018

AA: While facing the task of the appointment of the postmasters as President, Abraham Lincoln remembers "his first jury" as a child when he defended black Jim who had stolen a chicken. His "law education" consisted of the Bible, The Pilgrim's Progress, and Aesop's Fables. Everybody cries during Abe's moving and eloquent defense speech. After a unanimous verdict of "not guilty" Huck, the prosecutor, takes the law into his own hands anyway, and the preacher who has arrived at Abe's request to give mother a proper funeral service, witnesses a reckless fight between Huck and Abe. Abe's lost sickle, left hanging in a tree branch in the turmoil, now called for by Huck, the present postmaster, is still there after all these decades.

In Tender Memories Lincoln pays a visit to the front, even finding himself in the firing line. While tying up a wooden cross with a piece of cloth he remembers his mother's grave under the giant tree where she often read to him. Moments of earlier films of the cycle appear like refrains. Lincoln remembers his mistakes, and (like Ingvar Kamprad, who cherished mistakes), he makes a point of learning from them. The faces are luminous during the memorial service which is conveyed with deep feeling. In the finale we visit the grave as it stands in 1918.