from Peter Stowell, John Ford (Twayne, 1986)

This aspect of the film leads us directly into a confrontation with the monumental and stimulating essay on Young Mr. Lincoln compiled by the editors of Cahiers du Cinema. One of their basic arguments was that by depicting Lincoln's youth and mythologizing it, the film repressed politics in favor of morality: "under the idealist mask of Morality [the concealment of politics] has the effect of regilding the cause of Capital with the gold of myth, by manifesting the 'spirituality' in which American Capitalism believes it finds its origins and sees its eternal justifcation." By never mentioning the basis on which Lincoln gained his fame, "his struggle against the Slaver States," the film "castrated" him of his historico-political dimension , thereby reinforcing the idealization of the myth. In what is otherwise one of the landmarks of semiotic explication du texte, this argument is misdirected and actually beside the point. What these French, Marxist-oriented editors failed to see is that the film 's ideology is rooted in democracy, not capitalism, nor even republicanism. They simply misunderstood the reality of American politics, which is always idealistic and moralistic. American presidents are intended to be above political ideology. In fact, they are elected because the American public expects them to provide moral leadership by rekindling their faith in the ideals of the myth of American democracy. It is one thing to fault Americans for not scrutinizing their politicians' ideologies- although both get what they deserve but quite another to attack the premises of a film that accurately portrays

the state of American political reality.

This European ideological perspective appears again when the Cahiers editors state that Zanuck's interest in this film was motivated by his "belief that he was contributing to "the Republican offensive" against Franklin Delano Roosevelt's election and New Deal promises. (35)