Pushin' Ideology

John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln fulfills its status of Hollywood movie by spreading the ideology of American capitalism in a none too subtle way. To say that Ford’s depiction of Abraham Lincoln as superhuman beacon of unshakeable justice, his cheating at tug-o-war notwithstanding, is overwrought would be somewhat of an understatement. Considering the economic and artistic climate, described by the editors of Cahier du Cinema,  out of which the film is emerging, this overly sentimentalized account is unsurprising.

 

The editors make sure to point out the “Big Business” side of film, which is crucial and, I think, adds a problematic element for the film critic. They write: Creditor of the capitalist system, subject to its constraints, its crises, its contradictions, the American cinema, the main instrument of the ideological super-structure, is heavily determined at every level of its existence” (499).  Young Mr. Lincoln is certainly riddled with ideology ripe for study in these terms.  

 

Unlike many of the films we have seen throughout this course, Young Mr. Lincoln feels the most commercial. Its plot, now almost a cliché, is classically appealing and there is very little pomp or “artsy-ness” to it. I think this is worth mentioning particularly because John Ford “wrote it together” with the screenwriter, Lamar Trotti. This adds to last week’s discussion on the director as the author of the film. Evidence of John Ford’s authorship is hard to deny, and the movie has the same feel as a novel. I think we can see the novelistic qualities of Young Mr. Lincoln. As mentioned in the article, its chronology is undisrupted and its narrative decidedly linear. What difference do we see in films that have been written and directed by a single person with little variation from the script?