Long Day's Journey Into Night

"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. ****

A long descent into the sick heart of a family that is as dysfunctional as any to ever hit the silver screen. This movie covers, in sometimes tedious detail, the idiosyncrasies of each member of the family. Mom, (Kate Hepburn) in an Oscar-worthy performance as the center of the family and a drug addict. She is almost too convincing as someone on the edge. Dad, (Richardson) as the miserly father too cheap to even give his sick wife and son the proper medical treatment. And the 2 sons played by Stockwell and Robards as the demented and damaged off-shoots of 2 very fragile human beings. If you look closely, O'Neil has made it so that it seems each individual is responsible for the way the family has turned out. And so it is with all of us. It is not just our parents but ourselves that effect the family tree and its health or lack of it.

Although this film retains the feel of a stage production, this seems to heighten the tension and emphasize how amazing these performances really are.

I've always felt that the play is well-suited to being filmed in black and white. The lack of color seems to bring out even more of the dreary agony that the characters are going through, as well as making the fog seem even more dismal and real.

Because O'Neill's play is apparently autobiographical, the suffering is amplified intensely. This film is a fantastic drama--but because of the length (around 3 hours) and the anguish that the characters go through, you need to be sure you're in the right mood before you sit down to watch it.

You know the play. You know the actors. But , each new view is the first. Sure, the atmosphere is the best thing. And the performances, off course. But you feel be more. Because Mary Tyrone , so familiar from play has new nuances and shadows and creepy lights in the hands of Katharine Hepburn. Because Ralph Richardson is Jamie Tyrone in each detail. Because Jason Robards and a so young Dean Stockwell. Its gift - it represents more than a good adaptation. But a subtle, precise gem about the fall of members of a family.In many scenes, as the reflections of a mirror.

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.