Abraham Lincoln

D. W. Griffith: Abraham Lincoln (US 1930). Ian Keith (John Wilkes Booth), Kay Hammond (Mary Todd Lincoln) and Walter Huston (Abraham Lincoln).

Abraham Lincoln / Abraham Lincolns liv. 

    US © 1930 Feature Productions. EX: Joseph M. Schenck. 

    P+D: D.W. Griffith. SC: Stephen Vincent Benet, Gerrit J. Lloyd – based on the story by John W. Considine, Jr. DP: Karl Struss. AD: William Cameron Menzies. M: Hugo Riesenfeld. 

    CAST: Walter Huston (Abraham Lincoln), Kay Hammond (Mary Todd Lincoln), Una Merkel (Ann Rutledge), Fred Warren (General Ulysses S. Grant), Hobart Bosworth (General Robert E. Lee), Frank Campeau (General Philip Sheridan), Henry B. Walthall (Colonel Marshall). 

    93 min

    Print: MoMA, three sections missing soundtrack.

    Viewed at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Cinema Verdi, 10 October 2008.

Mostly excellent visual quality, some sections looked like 16 mm blowups, partly missing soundtrack.

I saw this film for the first time and liked it. Yes, the Ann Rutledge scenes are hammy, but true feeling shines through the clumsiness and the bad makeup.

DWG takes a humoristic look into the great man, just as John Ford did in Young Mr. Lincoln.

Kay Hammond is good as his harridan wife.

The Civil War and its generals are seen on a human scale.

Walter Huston gets better and better during the picture, and the assassination is shocking after his touching speech. In the last images we see the shack where Lincoln was born and the Lincoln monument, and hear The Battle Hymn of the Republic, but we have seen the human being from the cradle to the grave.

This is a folklore version of Lincoln.

There is a strong storyline: the Union must be preserved.

DWG's dear quotes: the Southerners were "rebels, not traitors"; "deal with them as though they'd never been away".

On Grant: "find out what brand he drinks and send a barrel to all our other generals" [Old Crow seems to have been that victorious brand].

Not the best film of the Festival, nor a masterpiece, but my favourite film of the Festival. It is the portrait of the peacemaker. It is easy to stir violence, it is hard to stop it.

Today Matti Ahtisaari got the Nobel Peace Prize, and for a Finn there are certain similarities between Lincoln and Ahtisaari. Both have shown strength of character in putting an end to civil wars.

This year in Finland we have the 90th anniversary of our civil war, still a sensitive theme, and we can understand how Americans feel about theirs.

PROLOGUES TO THE BIRTH OF A NATION SOUND REISSUE

D. W. Griffith: [Conversation between D. W. Griffith and Walter Huston on The Birth of a Nation] (US 1930). Screenshot from YouTube.

(1) [CONVERSATION BETWEEN D. W. GRIFFITH AND WALTER HUSTON ON THE BIRTH OF A NATION] (D. W. Griffith, Inc., US 1930). D: David W. Griffith; cast: D. W. Griffith, Walter Huston; [16 mm?], 213 ft., 6 min, sound; print : MoMA, original in English, e-subtitles in Italian - shown in some other format than 16 mm

(2) [INTERMISSION PROLOGUE TO THE BIRTH OF A NATION REISSUE] (D. W. Griffith, Inc., US 1930). D: David W. Griffith; cast: D. W. Griffith; 225 ft, 2’30”, sound; print: LoC, original in English, e-subtitles in Italian

Kevin Brownlow: "This interview between Walter Huston and Griffith was planned as the prologue to the 1930 reissue (with soundtrack) of The Birth of a Nation, but it was probably not used. Huston and the crew had come off Abraham Lincoln. It was photographed by Karl Struss, Griffith’s regular cameraman at this period. The assistant director was the veteran Herbert Sutch, the head electrician was Edward Seward, and the children were Byron Sagee, Betsy Heisler (the daughter of Stuart Heisler?), and Dawn O’Day, a child actress who grew up to be Anne Shirley. Since the crew came from Abraham Lincoln, one can safely assume that Griffith directed it and that the assistant cameraman was Stanley Cortez." – Kevin Brownlow.

In the prologue to the second half of the film, Griffith reads intertitles from the silent version and quotations from Woodrow Wilson’s A History of the American People (1902).

"The Huston-Griffith prologue was shown when The Birth of a Nation opened as a road show at the Geary Theater in San Francisco in September 1930, and played for 3 weeks. This was a grand affair, complete with live prologue. The Griffith reading may have been shown too. But the run was a financial disappointment, involving legal entanglements with the co-producer, W. H. Kemble, a Brooklyn theatre man who with Aitken revived the Triangle Film Corp. in order to create the sound reissue of Birth. The pre-recorded interview was dropped when the show moved to Los Angeles. I don’t think it was ever used again." – Russell Merritt.

William M. Drew: "[The Walter Huston prologue] seems to have been cut from the film not long after [the run at the Geary Theatre in the fall of 1930], as I can find no mention of the prologue in the many articles and advertisements heralding the nationwide reissue of the synchronized version throughout 1931 when I was searching the online newspaper archive. Fortunately, however, the prologue was eventually rediscovered and made available in the 1960s." (William M. Drew)

It is sad to witness Walter Huston speaking of "the great Ku Klux Klan", and Griffith affirming that "rather true does it sound". And both had just filmed Abraham Lincoln.