Why Are Film Depictions of Lincoln’s Assassination Always Uninvolving?

A joke floating in the air during the making of Steven Spielberg’s movie about Abraham Lincoln takes aim at the lengths Daniel Day-Lewis has gone in the past to create a sense of realism. The punchline essentially posits that Day-Lewis has suggested to Spielberg that in order to create the deepest sense of authenticity related to the assassination of Lincoln, he should actually be shot in the head during the filming of that scene.

One can well imagine Spielberg and Day-Lewis will combine their respective talents to create the most enduring depiction of the assassination scene ever put on film. Or, at least, one hopes. The shooting of Lincoln has always been rather problematic for filmmakers.

A survey of the movies that have been made about the Great Emancipator reveals a distinct unwillingness to get too graphic. Since the makers of these movies don’t have access to the actual footage of the murder like those who make movies about JFK do, they have had to dip into their cinematic bag of tricks, but that bag seems to have been confiscated by some law enforcement agency in charge of protecting the dignity of Lincoln. Maybe it is that dignity, respect, and general view of Lincoln as one of if not the best president the country has ever had that has paradoxically resulted in making his assassination particularly uninvolving on film.

Judging by film recreations, the killing of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth was a curiously bloodless affair. Even in a film made as recently as 1998, though admittedly a TV movie, the point-blank shooting produces no blood. “The Day Lincoln Was Shot” merely shows Booth pulling the trigger and Lincoln’s head falling forth and back amid a hazy gunpowder cloud.

What is startling is how this film is so incredibly representative of the entire canon of films that include a recreation of the assassination scene. While the makers of Lincoln biopics may be seeking to retain the dignity of the president, they have also succeeded in making the assassination less dramatic and emotionally engaging. Nobody is calling for horror movie gore in which Lincoln’s skull and brains fly out in a shower of blood, but the bloodlessness of the cinematic appropriation of Lincoln’s murder transforms into a metaphorical bloodlessness. By reducing the horror of the event, the horror of the act and its consequences is simultaneously abridged.

One thing Spielberg and Day-Lewis must absolutely work to avoid is turning the assassination scene into a moment of unintended comedy. One of the earliest movies to include an assassination scene may have been very dramatic to an audience barely used to seeing acts of violence thanks to the new medium, but today it serves as an iconic example of why so many younger audiences avoid old black and white movies. Doubtlessly, the makers thought they were creating a scene of unconditional dreadfulness that might even possess the power to traumatize, but time has a way of reworking intent.

Take a look at the scene here from the film “Abraham Lincoln” and fast forward to the 1.24.40 mark and wait for the moment Booth pulls the trigger. The performance by Walter Huston that recreates the moment of Lincoln’s assassination has transformed from profound drama into one of the funniest things you’ll ever see. It is the very model of a job of ridiculously hokey acting.

Daniel Day-Lewis can certainly be counted on to improve over this particular precursor even without actually being shot in the head. But it would behoove Spielberg and his star to pore over previous cinematic adaptations of this singularly horrific moment in American history while keeping in mind that what may be intensely dramatic today can become an object of derision by tomorrow.

For more from Timothy Sexton, who prepared for this article by making a Lincoln movie, read:

The Third Secret of Fatima: Assassination or Sex Scandal?

The Anarchist Who Assassinated Pres. William McKinley

Daniel Day Lewis: Best U.K. Movie Actor Ever?

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