Long Day's Journey Into Night

This is a typically dark, fine-grained O'Neill work that becomes almost overwhelmed with its own moodiness. Hepburn plumbs some psychological depths here as the drug-addicted mother. Richardson is fine as well, but it is disappointing that double-Oscar winner Fredric March, who won a Tony for the role on Broadway, did not play Tyrone is the screen version. We do get to see Jason Robards recreate his role, and his experience clearly comes through. This is continually penetrating vision of a family that perhaps is not as dysfunctional as "normal" families would like to believe. A disturbing film well worth seeing.

For what Eugene O'Neill expected to be his epitaph work, he wrote Long Day's Journey Into Night in 1942 with instructions to his third wife Carlota Monterey, that it be not performed until 25 year after his death. We should have first been seeing it in 1977, but the rights reverted to Yale University and they broke the O'Neill instructions and published the play in 1956 and it made it's Broadway debut in 1957. All of the four principal members of the cast got Tony Nominations with Fredric March winning the Tony that year. Wife Florence Eldridge played the drug addicted Mary Tyrone and the sons were played by Jason Robards, Jr. and Bradford Dillman.

Odd that Fredric March who certainly was a movie name was not asked to repeat his performance, but Ralph Richardson certainly fills in for him ably. Jason Robards, Jr. was the only member of the original Broadway cast to repeat his part for the screen as the drunken and whoring older brother. Younger brother Edmund the prototype for O'Neill himself is played here by Dean Stockwell.

However in the only film she did between Suddenly Last Summer in 1959 and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner in 1967 was cast Katherine Hepburn as the mother who because of her drug addiction descends into madness. She got an Oscar nomination, but lost to Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker.

O'Neill when he died was acclaimed as America's foremost dramatist and many will say he is still that today. Long Day's Journey Into Night is short on plot, but long and deep on characterization. The whole action of the play takes place in 1912 on a summer's day at the home of James Tyrone acclaimed matinée idol of a bygone era with Tyrone and his family. Eugene O'Neill wanted to show us where he came from and why he had the attitudes he did and he succeeded beyond even his own imagination.

The Tyrones are the O'Neills. In more ways than one I might add. O'Neill was the family name of the Earl of Tyrone who back in Queen Elizabeth's Tudor England was the uncrowned King Of Ireland. O'Neill knew full well the rank he had attained in his own profession and was claiming literary royalty so to speak.

Ralph Richardson as James Tyrone/O'Neill was an actor of great promise who got acclaim for performing as The Count of Monte Cristo in a dramatization of Alexander Dumas's novel. He took easy success and performed the play so much the public would not see him as anything else. Certainly actors try to avoid typecasting and while the play made him rich eventually the public bored of it and him. Knowing that money was not coming in, he invested frugally into real estate. Some call it frugal, some call it cheap.

During the difficult birth of Eugene/Edmund, Mary Tyrone/O'Neill developed an addiction to morphine, mainly because Richardson went to a cheap quack. The American stage had not seen a descent into madness like this since Jessica Tandy in Streetcar Named Desire. Though she was nominated for this performance and won four Academy Awards for other films, this may be Katherine Hepburn's best work. It's also one of the few substantial women's roles in any of Eugene O'Neill's plays. You will not forget Hepburn in this part.

Jason Robards, Jr. was older brother James Tyrone/O'Neill. He's several years older than his younger brother and there was another son who died in infancy between them. He's not got his brother's talent for writing and as an actor, he's followed his father and taken the easy road to dissipation himself. Both are carousers, but Richardson's a has been, and Robards will become a never was.

The Tyrone/O'Neill family is all recorded through the perceptive eyes of Dean Stockwell. This was Eugene O'Neill's way of taking us into a dark corner of his past, he's letting us know as few humans on the planet ever did as to what made him tick.

Once seen Long Day's Journey Into Night is never forgotten.

Let me be upfront about the whole thing & say that this film is difficult to watch. So much so that it took me multiple sittings to get through it. However, I am still glad that I stuck with it because as far as dysfunctional families go, this is a gold mine. All the characters obviously have familial affection but they can't forgive each other for past indiscretions. Each knows that they are failing to connect as a family but believes it to be someone else's fault. Having known two such families on a very personal level, I am amazed at how close this is to reality!

The matriarch of this family is a drug addict who loves her family dearly. But she also resents them for various reasons: her husband for being a miser & cheating on her, her elder son for being jealous and infecting his younger sibling in childhood (the sibling died of the infection) and her youngest son for the complications surrounding his birth, which led to her addiction. The family too loves her in return but resent her for not having enough strength and self-discipline to overcome the addiction, even though they also indulge in overdrinking! The father resents his sons for being lazy and often compares their 'privileged' upbringing to his own miserable upbringing. His absolute fear of poverty makes him unable to provide proper medical assistance to his family. Besides resenting his parents for their obvious failings, the elder son resents his youngest brother for being better liked by the parents & also for being more talented than him. And if you thought that the matters could not get any worse, the youngest son is diagnosed with TB! This family, which was already doing very poorly, is shaken to its core. And all you can do as a viewer is listen to each and every member & sympathize because they have all reached a point of no return. There is equal parts love & hate in their relationships & even the viewer can see that not much can be done to avoid further heart break & alienation that is soon to follow.

"Long Day's Journey Into Night", taken from Eugene O'Neill's original play written between 1939 and 1941, is a telling, semiautobiographical account of one day in the lives of the broken Tyrone family. Mary, the wife (Katharine Hepburn in an wrenching, afflicting performance that earned her an Oscar nod) is mentally unstable and takes morphine to steady her nerves. Her constant berating of her inebriated actor husband James (Sir Ralph Richardson) serves as embarrassment for him and his sons, James Jr. (Jason Robards), an alcoholic free spirit, and Edmund (Dean Stockwell, in a senitive and effective performance), the frail son dying of tuberculosis. A stagy film, to be sure, but the dialogue is spoken which such anger and despair that it is impossible to dislike. Also, during the day, it seems as if the family is cordial and polite, but when darkness falls, everyone unleashes their belittling venom on each other, thus symbolizing the contrast between day and night. This quartet of fine performers were awarded honors at the Cannes Film Festival for their painstaking work on this overpowering masterpiece. A great early achievement from legendary director Sidney Lumet. ****

I just caught an interview with Sam Shephard on Fresh Air where he mentions that this movie was one of the reasons he got interested in the theater. He talked about the great performances of Jason Robards, Ralph Richardson, Dean Stockwell, and Katherine Hepburn. My memory of the movie goes back to the late 60's in Berkeley when I had just seen a performance of the play by the Berkeley Rep and then watched the film shortly thereafter in an on campus showing. I, too, was blown away by these performances. In my mind, they rank up there with the very best in the history of film as an ensemble piece of acting. The direction by Sidney Lumet was outstanding and the screenplay remained true to the original play which has never been a common practice in Hollywood. Perhaps these characters resemble members of my family a little too much but they have not been forgotten in the 30 plus years since I last saw the film.