Conspiração

Superbly directed and photographed, and very well acted by Dick Powell, Will Geer, and Adolph Menjou, this movie ranks as one of director Anthony Mann's best achievements. Not one of his trademark noirs, it still has the characteristic tense look and feel, while staking out its own claim to originality, capturing the mood of the country as it is about to explode into a bloodbath. Set on the eve of the Civil War, a New York police detective (Dick Powell) boards a southbound train in New York to foil a conspiracy to assassinate President elect Lincoln. The train setting provides an apt stage in which the passions of the day are played out, with Unionists and Secessionists armed to the teeth. Factually, the details are probably off, but the mood of the time seems to be fairly accurately portrayed.

The various Presidential assassinations have generated few first rate films. The best of the lot is Oliver Stone's JFK, but it is also quite controvertial as Stone takes for granted the conspiracy theory of A.D.A. Garrison of New Orleans (which was generally discredited). But Stone's movie does resurrect the real atmosphere of confusion and doubt that political murder retains to this date. So, for all it's defects, it does make its point.

There is no film about Garfield's assassination, and only one old film (THIS IS MY AFFAIR with Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, and Victor MacLaughlin) touched on McKinley's murder. With Lincoln you have no definitive film, a la JFK, but several movies that show the killing or deal with the events or personalitie around it. These include the two sequences in Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION and ABRAHAM LINCOLN, the film biography of Edwin Booth (PRINCE OF PLAYERS - with Richard Burton as Edwin, Raymond Massey as Junius Brutus Booth Sr., and John Derek as John Wilkes Booth), and the story of Dr. Samuel Mudd, THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND (directed by John Ford, and starring Warner Baxter as the unfortunate Doctor - this may be the best of the Lincoln Assassination films due to Ford's excellent directing). And there is this nice little film directed by Anthony Mann, and starring Dick Powell and Adolphe Menjou. Historically, it is more accurate than some of the reviewers here would believe. An Italian barber named Fernandina was behind the plot (originated in Baltimore) in which a Pinkerton operative infiltrated the scheme to cause a disturbance while Lincoln was delivering a speech in Baltimore, and in the confusion give one of a dozen selected plotters a chance to kill the President-elect. Pinkerton tipped off Old Abe, and his stop in Baltimore was cancelled. Also, he boarded the train in Philadelphia in a disguise (a tam-a shanter and cape were suggested in the press). Lincoln was lampooned for being a silly coward by his opponents, but it was probably true - during the initial weeks of the Civil War Baltimore got more military treatment (including a massacre of a mob of citizens by Massachusetts soldiers) than any other Northern trouble-spot. Fernandina disappeared in the next few months (his eventual fate remains unknown). Pinkerton (who had worked with Lincoln in Illinois, dealing with the Illinois Central Railroad - which also brought him into contact with General McClellan) went on to create the Secret Service. If he overestimated Southern strength, it was unfortunate - but he was a great detective. For all the fictional aspects of the film's script, the movie does capture the urgency of the situation, and the uncertainty of the early days of the Civil War.

Tall Target (1951)

The simple idea of Anthony Mann approaching a crime movie about Abraham Lincoln made me seek this out. And it's great stuff, filmed with the lively, dramatic black and white of the time. And in a weird quirk, the leading man (played by Dick Powell) is named John Kennedy. Mann was just beginning his legendary set of eight Westerns with James Stewart.

While not a bit a film noir officially, this is coming from that era, and has the dark, ominous feel of a good noir. Powell (a noir staple) plays a detective with a somewhat modern air (not 1861, when is when the film is set), and he some of that man alone against the world quality. And then, on top of it, this is a "train movie," one of that unnamed genre of films that is primarily or entirely set on a train, up and down the length in various ways (what one character with a drink in his hand calls "the longest bar in the world, New York to Baltimore").

This one starts beautifully at night, and there is some terrific stuff just to look at, as the lights against the night sky are stark and the shadows heavy. The smoke and steam billows gray into the black sky. The plot, proceeding, is remarkably visual, too, with Powell looking for clues as things start to look increasingly ominous.

There are some great side characters here, including Ruby Dee in her young elegance and strength. And then there are some side actors who play their caricatures a little too hard (like the train conductor, briefly, but several times).

The cloak and dagger plot is fairly linear—the story is based on fact loosely, so there might not have been total freedom. But I'm not sure how many times on one train ride Mr. John Kennedy can get himself into a total lethal trap and then fight, trick, or luck his way out of it. But that's part of the fun of it, I suppose.

And there is enough other stuff going on here to make it really interesting and beautiful. A surprise for me.

"The Tall Target," about a plot to kill Lincoln before his inauguration, is a compact little film directed by Anthony Mann and starring Dick Powell, Adolphe Menjou, Marshall Thompson, and Ruby Dee. Powell plays John Kennedy, a detective and admirer of the future President who finds out about an assassination plot and hopes to stop it, although his written report seems to fall on blind eyes. On board a train, Kennedy finds the person he was to meet is dead, someone is impersonating him, and, from all the political talk, there are lots of suspects who hate Lincoln as the country gets ready for war.

Most of the action takes place on the train and the atmosphere and black and white cinematography neatly capture the period. The performances are all excellent, including that of Will Geer as the train conductor and Ruby Dee as a young slave whose mistress' brother (Thompson) is a prime suspect in the assassination plot. Twenty years earlier, Dick Powell was a boy tenor playing male ingénues opposite Ruby Keeler; in the '40s, he turned to tough detective type roles, and ultimately became a highly successful producer. He's very good in "The Tall Target" but a little too modern in manner and dialogue delivery. It's somewhat noticeable because the period is captured very well by the other actors.

This is a very good movie with a neat ending and based on a true incident. There was, by the way, a John Kennedy who was a former law enforcement officer who served in the Lincoln administration. Whether he was involved in this situation, I don't know. It's a wonderful story nonetheless.

Although the film is a work of fiction, The Tall Target is based in part on an actual incident that involved an attempt to assassinate President- elect Abraham Lincoln on his way to Washington to assume the presidency in early 1861. A planned stop in Baltimore was canceled and Lincoln was spirited into Washington in the wee small hours of the morning with no kind of fanfare or publicity, as he put it, 'like a thief in the night'.

Anthony Mann directed this 19th century noir type film starring Dick Powell as a New York police sergeant who gets wind of a plot to murder Lincoln in Baltimore. After he confides his suspicions to colleague Regis Toomey, Toomey winds up dead and Powell's more convinced than ever of the rightness of his belief. He boards the train that Lincoln is scheduled to board in Baltimore on to warn him, but Powell's got a lot of people on that train ready to do him in and he doesn't know who to trust.

The Tall Target is very similar to Mann's other classic Winchester 73 in the tautness of the direction and script. There isn't one wasted frame of film in The Tall Target and the suspense is kept throughout, even though history tells us Lincoln dodged a bullet that day. Mann assembled a very strong supporting cast for Powell that includes Adolphe Menjou as a militia colonel called to the colors, Leif Erickson as a Bowery tough, Will Geer as an officious conductor, Marshall Thompson as a southern hothead and resigned West Point cadet and his sister Paula Raymond.

Best performance in the film though is that of young Ruby Dee who plays a slave to Thompson and Raymond traveling with them. She proves to be the only real friend Powell has on the train. It's a quiet understated performance of dignity and strength.

By the way in case any of you are wondering why she doesn't just run away and claim her freedom, a couple of things stops her. The Dred Scott decision for one which obliterated the Missouri Compromise of 1820 with the northern free and southerns slave states and the new Fugitive Slave Law from the 1850 Compromise. However Dee knows that freedom is coming her way and soon.

The Tall Target is one excellent film, one of the best from Dick Powell when he decided to stop making musicals. Catch it absolutely.