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It remains the only biopic that attempts to cover the president’s life in its entirety. Griffith came back to Lincoln 15 years later for Abraham Lincoln (1930). There is no reference to Lincoln as an emancipator rather, he is a friend of the South, whose assassination, depicted in the film, removes his “fostering hand” from the process of Reconstruction. The less frequently discussed first part offers a portrait of Lincoln (played by Joseph Henabery, who had a long career as a director). That film is remembered for its second part, which made heroes of white Southern Klansmen “protecting” themselves against radicals and blacks.

President Woodrow Wilson supposedly described it as like “writing history with lightning.”

Griffith’s silent film about the Civil War and Reconstruction. None, of course, has been more controversial than The Birth of a Nation (1915), D.W. The most important films on historical topics have always been tied to cultural moments, shaping and revealing assumptions about the past. The film restores for our time a vision of Lincoln as a tireless opponent of slavery and, in the process, speaks to the political problems we face as a nation today. Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t just portray Lincoln, he inhabits him, giving us not a stick figure but a beleaguered leader whose crafty political genius leads to passage of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery. Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln both overturns a century of cinematic portrayals of the 16th president of the United States and challenges a decades-long scholarly, if not popular, vision of him as halfhearted and reluctant in his efforts to eradicate slavery. Lincoln (1939), the best film ever made about Lincoln-until now.

“This is the jack-legged lawyer from Springfield.” Fonda relented, and the result was Young Mr.

“You’re thinking of the Great Emancipator,” responded the director. When John Ford first asked Henry Fonda to play Lincoln, the actor said no. Dreamworks Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, The Kobal Collection At Art Resource, NY

Man of steel and velvet pii_email_c644c9003ce2b22ac34c