Young Mr Lincoln

This first product of the Ford-Fonda partnership - reputedly a favourite not only of Ford but of Eisenstein too - today commands classic status. Composed of serio-comic scenes from small town life, heavy with a future perfect sense of Myth-in-the-making, it's riven by tensions between insignificance and monumentality (Fonda: 'For me it was like playing Jesus Christ') that explode in the histrionic splendour and 'excess' of the celebrated final sequence: Abe Lincoln setting out to scale unseen heights against the portentous gloom of a gathering storm.