1940 – Raymond Massey
Abe Lincoln in Illinois
I’m very sorry to say, I didn’t like Raymond Massey performance in this movie and I have several very specific reasons why. Obviously it is a story about the life of Abraham Lincoln before he was elected President of the United States. It covered his humble beginnings, his reluctant sojourns into politics, and the questionable relationship and marriage to Mary Todd. The film got a few of the facts right, but they got Lincoln’s actually motivations quite wrong, something I felt through Massey’s performance. I know I’m being picky. He actually had a fair amount of ambition to be a politician. And he actually had a nice relationship with his wife.
But what I didn’t like about Massey’s performance was that he portrayed the historical figure as a rather likeable man at the beginning, and pretty much the opposite in his later years. And I can’t imagine that he would have been as popular or charismatic if he was actually like the character Massey played. To start with, yes, he bore a fair resemblance to Lincoln, but the first time we see him on the screen, he shares it with his parents. The only method filmmakers had of de-aging actors was through makeup and lighting. But Massey honestly looked older than the actors playing his parents. I didn’t buy for one moment that he was younger than them. That took me out of the story right from the very beginning.
And maybe it was the writing, but Massey played Lincoln as a simpleton, a stone’s throw away from an idiot. Then, as he became educated, his honesty was such a rare thing that everyone instantly liked him. The pressed him into political service, even though he was very vocal about his desire to not be a politician. But he did whatever his friend told him to do, only because he was too nice to say no…?
And then as his political stature grew, the more sullen and depressing he became. His marriage to a woman he didn’t love made him more sour, and Massey seemed to suck the energy out of every scene. He seemed to make the movie lifeless and dull, and I don’t think it was intentional. I mean, even when he was giving a rousing political speech, he created an air of depression, not patriotism. Was that the real Abraham Lincoln? I doubt it was, but maybe I’m wrong.