On the Pritzker Military Library podcast I listened to a historian who wrote a book on the Lincoln assassination who got very heated on the topic of Dr Mudd - apparently Mudd's family have run a very effective campaign to clear the name of their most notorious ancestor which annoyed this historian, who thinks not only was Mudd rightly arrested, he should have been hung. You won't get that impression from this film which is firmly in the Mudd-was-innocent camp. All he does here is help fix up a man's broken leg on a rainy night - unaware that the man was John Wilkes Booth, who has just shot Lincoln.
There is no mention of Mudd having met Booth several times prior or other evidence he was in on the conspiracy to kidnap Lincoln or the fact he hated Lincoln instead of admiring him. But the filmmakers had their take on the story, which they wanted to follow through (writer Nunally Johnson was a Southerner), and they did. Fair enough, I guess - they had a vision, everyone in the movie was pretty much dead when they made it, and that is their right.
Less defendable are some other scenes: such as one where a white trouble maker goes on Mudd's farm to tell his former slaves they are as good as white men, and the former slaves chase the troublemaker off with joyous, savage screams; Mudd's loyal black, who adores him so much when he gets sent off to a Florida prison, enlists in the army to look after him (can you arrange that, can you?); Mudd's "cute" crotchety pro-secession father in law, threatening to re-fight the war; the soldiers in the prison who get the most upset are all black; the union soldiers are unkept, scruffy and mean; Northern politicians are manipulative and corrupt (except for martyred Abe). It's racist pro-Southern propaganda, like a lot of Hollywood movies of the 1930s, and it got on my nerves.
Okay, trying to be more objective: it's beautifully shot, at least it acknowledges that there were such things as black soldiers, the story is strong (it has a great three act structure), there are excellent support performances from John Carradine (Lincoln worshipping sadistic guard) and Harry Carey (matter-of-fact warden), the pace is fast. I just don't think it's a classic and feel it's got too much of a free ride from critics defending Ford.
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