Abraham Lincoln

This pre-Hays Code biopic from D. W. Griffith (The Birth of a Nation) follows the life of Abraham Lincoln, chronicling his early years as a country lawyer and romance with Ann Rutledge through to his presidency and later assasination. This hushed film, far from the rousing American mythmaking of John Ford’s Young Mister Lincoln or Griffith’s own Americana, depicts a Lincoln (portrayed brilliantly by Walter Huston—who also plays the Devil in All That Money Can Buy) haunted by past tragedy and fated to an early demise.