To that end, “Young Mr. Lincoln” practices a selective form of predestination. Lincoln does single-handedly prevent two white men from being lynched, but issues of race and slavery never arise. Five weeks before “Young Mr. Lincoln” opened, the contralto Marian Anderson, who had been forbidden to perform at Constitution Hall, sang instead at the Lincoln Memorial, crystallizing the monument’s association with freedom and civil rights. View all New York Times newsletters. It’s “a gleeful, tender and even sentimental film,” the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote in his review.

Source: New York Times January 26, 2018 15:00 UTC