Robert J. Maxwell It refuses to fly. The whole thing constitutes 90 minutes of parasitic drag.General MacLellan might have directed this. It has "a case of the slows." It begins with Abraham Lincoln's birth. There are extensive scenes of Lincoln (Walter Huston) tentatively courting Ann Rutledge (Una Merkel). They both move and speak slowly. The flirtation drags along. Merkel gets sick and dies with Huston by her side. She has long slow last words -- many long slow last words. Nine years later, John Ford zipped through all this in a few minutes. We didn't even see Ann Rutledge die, just a half frozen river accompanied by a few tragic chords in Al Newman's score.I understand that D. W. Griffith practically invented the grammar of the moving picture -- the cross-cutting, the invisible editing, the close up -- but he couldn't do a thing with this Steven Vincent Benet script, nor with the images we see on the screen.The close ups are an embarrassment. The actors are made up so emphatically that their lips and eyes might be seen from the most distant row of the balcony.One wonders whether Griffith really believed that Abraham Lincoln was such a great president. After all, from the director's point of view, Lincoln was on the wrong side of the Civil War. But maybe Griffith did admire Lincoln. Maybe he thought, "Well, at least Lincoln gave us Thanksgiving." But nothing can excuse a film that seems to have been shot in a vast tank of molasses.There's something to be said for quitting while you're ahead.

klondike2 If Griffith had stuck to Lincoln's personal life, this could have been an interesting, amusing, and occasionally insightful film. Griffith gives us a multi-layered and largely accurate portrait of Lincoln the man. We see the ungainly country lawyer, countrified in speech and manner, often serious, even melancholy, but with a rare ability to find humor in the most unlikely places and to laugh even at himself. We see Lincoln the inveterate story-teller, the insomniac, the doting father, the determined commander-in-chief the patient husband. If this had been the whole of the film, it would have been easy to overlook its painfully outdated style and to forgive its frequent omissions and exaggerations as poetic license.Unfortunately, the film necessarily includes Lincoln's political life, and here it moves from poetic license to outright falsehood. Slavery was the central issue of Lincoln's political career, a fact that Griffith tries to obscure, going so far as to turn Lincoln's pivotal 'House Divided' speech into an argument against secession. This is particularly ironic since it was really Lincoln's battle cry against encroaching slavery. When South Carolinians seceded two years later, this was the speech they pointed to as proof that when Lincoln took office, "the slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government ... and the Federal Government will have become their enemy." During Lincoln's presidency, the question of slavery occupied much of his time and attention, yet again Griffith chooses to ignore it. His Lincoln spends more time admiring the courage of Confederate soldiers than worrying about slavery. Even the Emancipation Proclamation gets only the briefest attention. Lincoln reads a line from the document, signs it, and says, "Well, gentlemen, it is done." It's oddly dismissive, coming from a man who considered emancipation the central act of his presidency and the most meaningful act of his life.Denied his opposition to slavery and concomitant commitment to democracy and the inalienable rights of man, Lincoln is reduced to endlessly repeating, "The Union must be preserved." Why it must be preserved is left to the audience's imagination. The film never gives us the slightest clue.

dbborroughs DW Griffiths first sound film is a static laugh fest. Out dated when it was made the survives at all because there is something truly bizarre about Walter Huston's lead performance (His is the only performance in a film full of non performances). He seems to think that Lincoln was a goof ball and while on some level it's a charming portrait its unlike anything I've ever seen or read in a portrait of the 16th president. (Huston's size also seems to vary from scenes to scene depending on the actors around him for a truly odd effect) The rest of the film is a throw back to the cinema pre-Birth of a Nation, with much of the scenes arranged in odd tableaux. To be certain part of it maybe the uncertainty of early sound equipment, however the result is like watching stuffed animals in a museum. The script is awful. It zips through Lincoln's life faster then cliff notes pausing only for romance, jokes and the odd highlight. Only one scene works, Lincoln's legendary late night walking the halls of the White House. Its a sequence that is strangely poignant. The rest of this film is like watching a bad road accident. Even allowing for the passage of 80 years I can't believe anyone ever took this film seriously. It's a turkey

MartinHafer This is the 26th movie I have seen from Harry Medved's book "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time" and I've gotta say that I agree with Medved's choice. While many of his "fifty worst" weren't THAT bad (a few were even pretty good), this one is probably the worst bio-pic I have ever seen. Now this doesn't mean that it's among the 50 worst films EVER made, however--just the worst bio-pic. You just can't get much worse than this one in fact.My biggest complaint isn't about how tediously slow the movie is or how horrible the dialog is. While these aspects did totally suck, they weren't the worst part of the film. The main problem is that so much of the film is just factually wrong, so on top of being boring and dumb, it isn't even correct!! Trust me on this one, I am an American History teacher and can assure you that this film appears as if they really didn't do any research--especially since the film repeats such obvious lies. Like George Washington before him (with his supposed wooden teeth and need to chop down cherry trees), after Lincoln's death lots of people pretty much made up the facts to make Lincoln seem bigger than life. Lots of great little homespun stories were created out of thin air--and Griffith totally made up many facts. The most obvious one is the supposed love affair between Lincoln and Ann Rutlage--this simply didn't happen. Other stupidly written and patently false portions of the film would include much of the Lincoln-Douglas segment of the film (especially the time-line for it), Lincoln loudly announcing that he'd found the perfect man to lead his troops (though Grant was about the 8th or 9th "perfect man" that Lincoln appointed to this position), etc., etc., etc.. Additionally, the film wasn't really told in a smooth narrative but seemed like overly-staged scenes from his life--often not in the right order or else done in such histrionic and melodramatic fashion that I laughed out loud. I loved the birth scene--John the Baptist and St. Francis must have had less auspicious and saintly births!! Heck, in THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, the birth was done with less melodrama!! The overall film really looks like an 1870s traveling company who did tent show, not a professionally made movie. Amateurish, silly and ridiculously nationalistic--it is meant to please dumb yokels, but not anyone with even a passing knowledge of history.Bad, dumb and totally uninspiring--this is one bad film disguised as something significant or patriotic. If you are interested in TRUE patriotism, read a biography of this man. The real Lincoln was a lot less "homespun" and much more a brilliant and occasionally very pragmatic politician--and THAT would make for a far more interesting film! By the way, one of the only things the film got pretty well was Mary Todd Lincoln. She really was a fussy woman who was almost impossible to get along with according to almost every description. Her life, though tragic, was also really interesting and could stand a GOOD bio-pic itself--giving more attention to her life before and after Abraham's death.I fully expect to get some hate mails and "not helpfuls" for this review. I have had to the nerve to criticize D.W. Griffith (a very important but very, very flawed film maker) and some knuckleheads might see this review as unpatriotic. The way I see it, lying about a nation's past like this film did is unpatriotic--plus the truth is far more interesting and compelling. Lincoln was a great president and a role model--not some sappy backwoods idiot who wears lipstick like he seems to be in this syrupy mess. And, yes, I did mean that he wore lipstick--the makeup was THAT bad.4/6/08 UPDATE: AN IMPORTANT NOTE--Please ignore the number of negatives posted for this film, as I have been "spammed". Although it's an old and obscure film, within a day or two I'd gotten slammed with five "Not Helpfuls". Obviously, my review hacked someone off enough that they are using proxy accounts to criticize my review. Normally with a movie this old and obscure, you MIGHT get one or two comments a year yet I got five in one or two days! Gimme a break!!