Did a serial killer go unrecognized?

[Phil H]

Lincoln is out in the UK in mid January - and Daniel Day-Lewis is said to give an extraordinary performance as the President.

Phil H

[sdreid]

I'm looking forward to seeing the new Lincoln film.

And, I'm not speaking of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter but I will probably also view that one just for fun.

[Steve S]

So.....Does DDL run through the woods shooting Confederates with a Springfield in each hand...?

[RivkahChaya]

And, I'm not speaking of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter but I will probably also view that one just for fun.

An excellent example, BTW, of the way it's perfectly legitimate to play with history, and turn out something like From Hell. I personally think From Hell should have been a bit "bigger," in the sense of being overblown and campy, and more obviously fantasy, so that even people who knew absolutely nothing about JTR understood that it was more fantasy than history. I think, ironically, more Americans than Brits picked up on that, just from being more familiar with Johnny Depp's work.

My reservation about Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln is that DDL is one of those crazed super-method actors who won't break character even when the cameras aren't rolling, from what I hear, and supposedly drives everyone else nuts. Lincoln was a serious figure for a serious time in history, but he wasn't, from what I gather, intense. He was very homish, and a friendly sort of person to people he had known for a long time, and from what I understand, determined to be close to his children, after having had an emotionally distant father, and losing his mother when he was young. It was sad, because he lost two children, one very young.

DDL is always very intense. It bothers me that this may be the one actor, of all the people out there, who would need to take a Valium in order to mellow out enough to play Lincoln.

But, he was very funny in A Room with a View, so maybe he will actually capture the whole Lincoln.

[Steve S]

Lincoln appears to be one of very few from the ACW who appears to have had a sense of humour..............

[RivkahChaya]

Lincoln appears to be one of very few from the ACW who appears to have had a sense of humour..............

American Championship Wrestling?

[Steve S]

Could have been...Got Jeff Davis by a Knock-out.......

[RivkahChaya]

Then got triple-fouled by John Wilkes Booth (use of a weapon; strike to the back of the head; abusive language). He totally would have gotten kicked out for good, if he hadn't been shot by the posse.

[Steve S]

[GregBaron]

Abraham...

DDL does a super job of capturing the homey Lincoln methinks...just a mellow Kentucky boy who only gets angry twice in the film when the pea brains push him to the brink.


Rather ironic we need an Irishman to play the American but you need a lanky fellow like DDL. It would be difficult to make a dwarf like Tom Cruise into the 6'4" Lincoln...


Anyway, I thought it a fine film for what that's worth...



Greg

[RivkahChaya]

Even if Cruise were 6'4, there are other reasons he'd be a bad choice for Lincoln.

But, you know this isn't the first time a movie has been made about Abraham Lincoln. Raymond Massey (a Canadian, but one who had a long Hollywood career) played him in Abe Lincoln in Illinois, in 1940, and he was nominated for an Oscar, and Henry Fonda (born in Nebraska), played him a year earlier, in a fictionalized account of his early life, and his career as a lawyer, in Young Mr. Lincoln, which was nominated for Best Original Story.

As far as I know, though, the first screen portrayal of Lincoln was in 1914, by an actor named Joseph Henabery, also a Nebraskan, who played him in The Birth of a Nation. There were probably people who saw that film who had known Lincoln in life. It was a small role, though, in that film, and he was mainly cast, because he really was 6'4.

Massey was pretty darned tall. I don't think Fonda was 6'4, but he was probably a little over 6 feet.

DDL looks remarkably like Lincoln around the eyes, though. He has deep-set eyes, like Lincoln did. DDL's eyes aren't quite as wide-set, but with some added bushy eyebrows, he looks remarkably like Lincoln. His cheekbones aren't as prominent, but make-up can probably fix that, too.

I want to see the film, but it's second on my list, after the Hitchcock film, with Helen Mirren.

[GregBaron]

Yes indeed...

Even if Cruise were 6'4, there are other reasons he'd be a bad choice for Lincoln.

But, you know this isn't the first time a movie has been made about Abraham Lincoln. Raymond Massey (a Canadian, but one who had a long Hollywood career) played him in Abe Lincoln in Illinois, in 1940, and he was nominated for an Oscar, and Henry Fonda (born in Nebraska), played him a year earlier, in a fictionalized account of his early life, and his career as a lawyer, in Young Mr. Lincoln, which was nominated for Best Original Story.

As far as I know, though, the first screen portrayal of Lincoln was in 1914, by an actor named Joseph Henabery, also a Nebraskan, who played him in The Birth of a Nation. There were probably people who saw that film who had known Lincoln in life. It was a small role, though, in that film, and he was mainly cast, because he really was 6'4.

Massey was pretty darned tall. I don't think Fonda was 6'4, but he was probably a little over 6 feet.

DDL looks remarkably like Lincoln around the eyes, though. He has deep-set eyes, like Lincoln did. DDL's eyes aren't quite as wide-set, but with some added bushy eyebrows, he looks remarkably like Lincoln. His cheekbones aren't as prominent, but make-up can probably fix that, too.

I want to see the film, but it's second on my list, after the Hitchcock film, with Helen Mirren.

Thanks RivkahChaya, I agree with your points and yes I threw Tom Cruise out there for humor more than anything....

I also saw Hitchcock but found it....well, I best let you see it before I ruin it with my opinions........we can discuss after you see it...

I did find DDL a remarkable likeness of Lincoln, after the makeup of course, they may have even fleshed out his elephantine ears...


Greg

[RivkahChaya]

I figured you threw in Cruise for humor, but I posted the rest, since a lot of Brit posters seem to be interested in the Civil War, and might not be aware of the earlier Lincoln movies.

Also, there's probably a word for it, but as the breadth of available knowledge increases, the depth of what people generally know seems to be decreasing. I'm constantly amazed at how much people just 15 years younger than I am don't know about fairly recent history. I would think that if I (I was born in 1967) know about the Lindbergh kidnapping, people born in the 1980s would know about the Patty Hearst kidnapping, but then I think about how much information people have been bombarded with, and how much of "the present" there is to keep track of anymore, I guess people have less and less time for history.

Anyway, I'm constantly surprised at how little people know about older movies. I guess I shouldn't expect a stasis, though. 1939 gets longer and longer ago. Star Wars is older now than The Wizard of Oz was when I was born.

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Rivkah

From the right pond perspective of a nearly-60 year old, I keep finding the same...and sometimes watching the quiz programmes on the telly, or chatting to quite normal, perfectly intelligent workmates, I am sometimes appalled at how little has carried down...I keep reassuring myself it can't be universal, but...

I was born 8 years after the end of WWll so I suppose my upbringing might be coloured by this, but so many folk are hard pushed to identify even campaigns or well-known events in that conflict...and WWl is a different world...I'm no historian in any real sense, (barring reading a bit), and had only a humdrum grammar school education curtailed a tad by my fathers premature death, but there does seem to be something of a chasm...and it's not just me...the lady wife's spotted it too...

Don't get me wrong - I'm well aware there are huge gaps in my own knowledge...but...

All the best

Dave

[RivkahChaya]

I'm not sure whether it's me, or my age, or generation, or what. I do read a lot, and my degree is in English, and as it happens, one of my favorite books is Testament of Youth, which you probably know is a WWI autobiography of a woman who was a nurse in the VAD. I read it when I was 14, which didn't seem unusual to me at the time-- it was 1980. I came at it more from a women's history sort of thing, my mother having been very involved in the second wave feminism movement in the US, and I read a lot of women's autobiographies. I read the biography of a woman who was ordained priest in the US Episcopal church in the early 70s, underground, which was the impetus for the church finally allowing the ordination of women, and Diary of Margery Kempe, as well as the Diary of Anais Nin, and The Bell Jar, all when I was a pretty young teenager, and I may have been a little off the apex of the bell curve, but other girls read those books back then.

So, anyway, I knew about WWI. WWII, I knew about, because my father's brother married into a survivor family. Granted, you don't learn a lot about battle sites, but I was moved to learn more on my own, at a younger age, because of it. And, then they teach you things in Hebrew school. They mostly teach "The Holocaust," but Hebrew schools, at least back in my day, did teach pretty accurate history of the Third Reich, and I knew more geography of central Europe that gentile kids when we studied Europe in public schools, not to mention knowing all my European capitals already.

It's possible I overestimate what the typical person knows. I also come from a family of academics.

And I'm fully prepared to admit that people under 25 know things I had to learn on my own, like having a sense of the metric system. Most Americans over 30 can do the math, but can tell you how far 5km is, or how much 5kg weighs (like, telling you in terms of a loaf of bread, or an average-sized cat, for example). Younger people know these things. They also all know how to type, even if it's just really fast hunting-and-pecking.

Like I said, the breadth of knowledge is so much greater now. They can identify pictures of people by country, just by the fashions and backgrounds. Teenagers couldn't do that when I was one. We couldn't look at a photo of people, and say, "They look like they're in Thailand," or "Argentina." They may not be able to find them on a map, but they know how people dress there. I try not to be critical when a skill or body of knowledge is fading. I don't want to be one of those people grumbling about how no one knows how to bail hay anymore, or drive a mule team. Some things aren't so important anymore.