Long Day's Journey Into Night

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.

"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. ****

This film version of the great American play is powerful and devastating. The cast is excellent. Hepburn is able to show the alterations in her character with subtle horror.

This story is a study in how humans lose themselves in the fog of drugs, alcohol, sex, disease, and other escapes from reality. None of the characters is willing to take responsibility for what is happening, and therefore they drift deeper and deeper into the night. The real horror is the fact that they could save themselves, but they never come out of the past or the fog long enough to take the first step.

The emotional impact of the play is incredibly powerful even as it is underplayed. This is one of the few films of a play that really works well and translates the emotions of the stage onto the screen without losing the depth and the catharsis.

When you read them from a book, Eugene O'Neill's plays seem kind of flat. The dialog seems ordinary and uninspired compared to more poetic U.S. playwrights like Tennessee Williams.

But the brilliant acting in this film version of "Long Day's Journey" - especially the delicately nuanced work of Katharine Hepburn as the mother and a sensitive performance by Dean Stockwell as the younger son - shows me what a magnificent playwright O'Neill was. At times this tragic play seems almost Shakespearean.

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.