The Iceman Cometh

I am adding my comment because the TV version did not show up on the IMDB cross-reference list. This play was previously produced in the early 1960s for the TV "Play of the Week" series. It starred Jason Robards Jr. as Hickey. Many consider this his finest performance and this TV version, the finest production. I saw both the movie version listed here and the TV version. As good as Lee Marvin's performance was, I also agree that the TV version is superior. See this if you can. The Iceman Cometh also happens to be my favorite play.

An aside; I believe that Jason Robards Jr. was not offered the part for the movie version because at that time, his alcoholism got the better of him. There is irony here since the play demonstrates the impact of alcoholism and the pipe dreams that come from it. Up till then, the role of Hickey belonged to Mr. Robards Jr. as it should have. Mr. Robards Jr. interpretation of Eugene O'Neill's plays have always been masterful. I am convinced he was deeply hurt and has always regretted not being able to perform in the movie production.

An experiment that I am sorry ended.

This movie was an early part of a new production experiment in which the audience prepaid for the series (I am not sure of the series name but I seem to remember the American Film Theater or Institute). I had subscribed to it and I am sorry that the experiment failed after producing perhaps no more than 10 fine productions of classic plays.

One of the brownest movies ever made -- brown walls, brown furniture, red-brown faces of the drunken patrons of Harry's Bar -- and somehow that feels appropriate, as a lot of it is about autumnal regrets and faded dreams. One in the series of the AFI's American Film Theatre series, it's a very faithful rendering of O'Neill's great play, with one original Broadway cast member (Tom Pedi's bartender) and loads of good casting throughout. John Frankenheimer's camera is thrust right up at the actors' faces, and you keep looking for artifice or melodrama, but, with the exception of Sorrell Booke's sodden Hugo, there's very little. Fredric March's deluded Harry Hope, Robert Ryan's despairing ex- revolutionary Larry, Jeff Bridges' guilt-ridden student (a very difficult role for a young actor, especially in company as august as this) -- all have the ring of truth, and once you get used to the deliberate pacing, repetitive arguments and apologies, and startlingly frank language for a 1946 play, you're hooked. As to Lee Marvin's Theodore Hickey: I was convinced up to his famous Act Three monologue, but he stumbles here, launching into badly calibrated fits of temper and back again. Compare it against Jason Robards Jr.'s interpretation in the 1960 Sidney Lumet-directed TV version, and you'll see the difference between a good actor overreaching and a master in a role he was born to play. (I also saw Kevin Spacey's attempt on the stage a few years ago: He played Hickey like Professor Harold Hill, all bluster and forced charisma, and it didn't work.) A depressing four hours, but worthy, and a rich sample of the actor's art.

Can I tell you that I have waited 30 years to see this movie? When I was in my late teens, I received a brochure in the mail advertising the American Film Theater series. One of the films in the series that made my eyes pop was the promise to show Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh". I was a big fan of O'Neill's work, but felt cheated by AFT's disastrous marketing concept of showing it's films to season subscribers only, and then only giving them two days to see the film. I was forced to take a pass, but mourned my loss ever since.

This play is rarely performed. At four hours, it would task most theater companies, and Hickey's 25 minute soliloquy in the last act requires only the best actors to pull off. I was fortunate to have seen this play, once in my life, performed on the stage. This was Chicago's Goodman Theater production starring Brian Dennehy as Hickey in 1990. I felt fortunate, but came away from that production dissatisfied. Dennehy was a "good" Hickey, but not a great one, and the rest of the cast left me a little shallow.

How glad I was then to discover that this film had been re-released. By pure chance, I saw a notice in the paper that this film would be showing at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. I couldn't let this opportunity pass by a second time. I attended the screening and was absolutely stunned. It exceeded my expectations.

First of all, the cast was stellar. Robert Ryan played his last film role here, and it was perfect. I don't say something like that very often. I cannot imagine a better Larry.

Fredric March played his last role here too, as Harry Hope. Also an excellent performance.

The question everyone would be asking about is Hickey, played by Lee Marvin. Was he up to the role? To my surprise, Marvin couldn't have been a better choice.

Hickey was a salesman, and a rare one at that. He was the type of salesman that could knock on your door and convince you that what he had to sell was what you needed. A salesman like that had to exude a sense of complete self confidence. They would have to be totally sure of themselves and show it. Lee Marvin did that perfectly.

The tragedy of Hickey was that he was his own best customer. He was a tortured soul until he came across a solution that made him feel that he could live with himself again, thus creating his own pipedream. His mistake was to think he found a solution that would save humanity.

Unfortunately, in Harry Hope's dive, pipe-dreams and illusions were the only thing the patrons had to live for. Tampering with that created disaster.

Lee Marvin convinced me that he was Hickey, and in a play like this, that is quite an accomplishment.

By the way, I discovered that this film is now available on VHF and DVD. I am getting a copy.

John Frankenheimer was a great director, 'Birdman of Alcatraz', 'Seven Days in May' and 'The Train' are all fabulous films and 'The Manchurian Candidate' is a masterpiece. Had no doubt that he would be well suited for this adaptation of 'The Iceman Cometh'. Which has all the attributes that 'A Long Day's Journey into Night', also written by one of the all time great American playwrights Eugene O'Neill, has and has what makes that play so powerful. The cast is a talented one too, with Fredric March and Robert Ryan in their last roles particularly grabbing the attention.

Of the thirteen films making up the interesting and ambitious but uneven American Film Theatre series from the early 70s, 1973's 'The Iceman Cometh' is easily one of the best and to me one of the few "great" ones of the series. Recently (well a couple of months ago) saw the 1962 film version of 'A Long Day's Journey into Night', which bowled me over, 'The Iceman Cometh' while not quite as great is very nearly on that film's level in my view. The cast are on top form and well served by O'Neill's masterful character writing and development, it's intelligently directed and is dramatically powerful. It is very faithful to the play, like almost all the adaptations in the American Film Theatre series are, without being overly so.

If you aren't too fond of a lot of talk, a lack of "likeable" characters, deliberate pacing and long lengths 'The Iceman Cometh' (both play and film) may not be your thing. If you don't mind slow pacing, love psychologically fascinating and masterfully developed characters and complex emotions, this will be right up your street. It certainly was mine, and being already familiar with the play and 'A Long Day's Journey into Night' helped a lot.

Did find the opening scene a little too darkly lit perhaps and on the sluggish side.

'The Iceman Cometh' however is otherwise very handsomely and atmospherically shot film, like all Frankenheimer's films. The photography and editing may not be as inventive as those for 'The Train' for instance, but this is not the kind of film, but the film doesn't feel like a filmed play and one of the few films in the series to not feel like that. Frankenheimer directs splendidly, pace-wise it's fluent, it captures the mood beautifully, it's subtle and it is very true in spirit to the play without being over-conventional.

Furthermore, the dialogue is still emotionally and psychologically powerful. There is a lot of talk, but it is talk that all feels crucial to the characters and their situations without feeling rambling or too heavy in exposition. The story is deliberately paced but atmosphere-wise it blisters with intensity, while also being in spots very moving. The ending has always stayed with me in the play and it lingered long in my mind after the film was over. 'The Iceman Cometh' is long in length, but this is an example of a play to film adaptation where a long length was necessary and where pretty much everything has to be intact. It gripped me and commanded the attention throughout.

All the characters are of the kind that are very flawed but fascinating in their complexity. O'Neill was a master of character writing and character development, and this film clearly understood that and embraced it. The acting is nothing short of excellent. The standouts being the devastatingly anguished turn of March and a similarly poignant and intense one from Ryan (the latter giving one of my favourite performances of his). Actually thought that an atypically cast Lee Marvin, whose performance had a more controversial critical response, did admirably in his difficult role and attacked it with gusto. While his delivery of his massive scene is not the earth-shattering of deliveries of that scene he does a noble and wonderful stab at it. Although Jason Robards was indeed a supreme interpreter of O'Neill one cannot have him in every film version of his plays. Young Jeff Bridges and Bradford Dillman are also impressive.

Overall, great and one of the best of the series. 9/10.

It was a wise decision on the part of producer Ely Landau- one of the only wise ones, as seems to be the history of the flawed ambition of the American Theater Company's movie adaptation productions- to hire John Frankenheimer as director. He was known at the time in the movie industry for churning out high-charged action and adventure pictures (i.e. The Train, Grand Prix), and the occasional dark classic (The Manchurian Candidate), but he started as a television director, and with a play that ran like The Iceman Cometh there would be needed someone who could track the stinging, meaning-of-life-and-death dialog of O'Neill's play with the camera and not make it feel too 'stagey'. This might be difficult to surmise that he made it fully cinematic in the sense of using more than one set or exteriors, as he didn't. Everything is confined to that set of Harry's bar. But within this precise, necessary limitation, Frankenheimer delivered one of his best projects.

Then again, how could he not with the source material? It's about some of the richest theater ever produced, least in the 20th century, and is considered by many to be O'Neill's epic masterpiece. It's a tale of a community, a quasi-family of bums and stragglers who're stuck more or less in a dive down in a seedy section of New York city in the early part of the century, awaiting the return of Hickey (Lee Marvin), a big force of a man who works in advertising. This time things are a little different, however, and a new revelation leads the men (and a couple of the women) to wonder if he's flipped his lid. Around this premise of a dark secret or a certain feeling of "death" that Hickey has brought with him, O'Neill creates an ensemble that's unforgettable in its mix of light and dark, principled and sleazy, afraid and just downright kooky. There's a whole mix; there's Larry the ex-anarchist who's slowly dying inside (Robert Ryan); there's the depressed-cum-demanding kid (Jeff Bridges); Harry (March); the bartender/pimp; a black gambler; the "Limey"; the "Tarts"; and a crazy, rambling European screaming about socialism from time to time.

And despite what some may have said comparing it to the 1960's made-for-TV version directed by Lumet (which I would love to see but is at the moment unavailable), I'd be hard-pressed to see a cast better than this. Just a reminder: Lee Marvin can act, amazingly, and here he puts his chops to such a test that he rolls on to his climactic, half hour quasi-confession like it's the performance of his life. Ditto for Ryan and March, and for them it was more-so (Ryan knew he was dying, adding a poignancy to what was probably his best, most subtle work, and March is captivating as the stubborn old drunk owner). And Bridges, in a role which he said made him want to continue seriously being an actor, is hard to take one's eyes away from, even as his character wavers from being sympathetic to unlikeable in a single scene. And the bulk of the supporting cast are all wonderfully played and transposed, injecting life into a play that requires it to keep it going full throttle.

It's not an easy thing to endure; it's four hours long, and for the first hour here and there one has to go through some minor early morning drunkenness from the characters, which isn't the least effective portion of the play as well as the film. From there on out, if one is tuned into O'Neill's precisely harrowing story of the bums and drunkards and outcasts and all very flawed human beings, it will work wonders even in its sparsest moments. The ending, I might add, is about as perfectly bittersweet as I've seen this side of Woody Allen's Manhattan. Frankenheimer's work is a nearly forgotten gem.