John Ford & Lincoln: A Sentimental Cinematic Journey (in-person)

John Ford is considered the greatest poet in the history of cinema and Abraham Lincoln the greatest president in the history of the Republic. Together, they shared an almost mystical bond in their love of America and the promise of the American dream.

No director in the history of cinema idealized Lincoln and insinuated him into the fabric of his art as John Ford did over the course of his fifty year career. In silent films like “The Iron Horse”, Ford showed Lincoln as a manifestation of the exuberant America in the heady prosperity of the 1920s. In “The Prisoner of Shark Island” Lincoln became a somber light in the darkness of the Great Depression while in “Young Mr. Lincoln”, the young lawyer stands as a symbol of American resolve and integrity as the clouds of war gathered in Europe. Even in the 1960s, Lincoln made fleeting and ghostly appearances in Ford’s films like “How the West Was Won” and “Cheyenne Autumn” as a brooding and melancholy mirror of the Old Artist in Winter.

Author and artist Joseph Malham, author of the award winning biography “John Ford: Poet in the Desert”, will speak on how Ford saw Lincoln as an idealized metaphor for the very best of the American Spirit and how he used it in his films in times of prosperity and turmoil, war and peace. Using Power Point and readings from his book, Malham will take the audience on a journey into the heart of classic cinema and the soul of the American Dream.