Eugene O'Neill: A Documentary Film

I'm not sure which is creepier, this clueless documentary or the man it's about, Eugene O'Neill. Despite the typical Ric Burns hagiographic film-making — the teary-eyed music, Christopher Plummer at his plummiest reading a text so worshipful it seems an intentional parody, and the incessant drumbeat of "greatness, greatness, greatness" — the viewer is left with more than enough evidence to see what Burns and the writers apparently cannot (or will not) see — that their much-revered subject was at best an egotistical monster, at worst, a navel-gazing jerk.

Even when O'Neill commits the central (and basest act) of his life, abandoning his faithful wife and his two small children without even a good-bye to run off with a hot mama, the filmmakers try to frame this tawdry behavior as something brave and noble, a great artist's quest for beauty. (In Burns' universe, "greatness," whatever that is, excuses anything and everything.) Without batting an eye, the filmmakers applaud the hot mama for luring the great man from his family by telling him that a man as great as he is should never have to smell a diaper. Did I mention that she was a compulsive liar and mythomaniac? But she told the "great" man what he wanted to hear, and one imagines the sex was pretty hot, at least for a while.

But it's all okay because eventually O'Neill is able to get on with the "great" work, which is writing the play in which he can finally "forgive" the drug and alcohol-riddled family that made him. It's all about me, me, me, Eugene O'Neill; of course it never occurs to him to write a play about the family he himself created and destroyed, or to ask their forgiveness. In fact, the creep goes out snubbing his nose at his two children, writing them out of his will (talk about mooning the misbegotten!) and leaving everything to the hot mama, who promptly betrays his dying wish so she can make a killing on the play he never wanted published. Of course, this gave the world more "greatness," so the filmmakers duly drop to their knees in worship.

Ric Burns should try making a documentary with no music, no narrator to tell us what to feel and think, and without once using the word "great." For once, we might actually begin to see his subjects as they were, not as they are worshiped.

I was confused by one of the reviews for this episode of "The American Experience". Instead of reviewing the quality of this biography, they seemed to be reviewing Eugen O'Neill--the man. While I could completely agree that he was a selfish jerk who deserved to be beaten with a dead halibut, you cannot completely write off this show just because O'Neill was in love with himself as well as a completely horrible person. Yes, he WAS a horrible person--barely someone I would even call a man (due to his great willingness to completely abandon his wives and kids--without having ANY further contact with them). But, you cannot completely write him off due to his great talents and because of that "American Experience" SHOULD have made this film.

What makes this film interesting is WHY. Why was O'Neill a horrible person? What about his childhood made him this disconnected from his fellow man? And, what about all this emotional turmoil actually helped him make his great plays? After all, O'Neill DID have a crazy childhood and it really became a great theme throughout his best plays--family dysfunction and alienation. All this made the film interesting. Another aspect of this biography that was interesting (though I am not sure if I liked it or not) was having some of the premier actors of the day acting out O'Neill--doing monologues as O'Neill. So, the likes of Christopher Plummer, Al Pacino, Liam Neeson and others act out O'Neill's inner struggles.

All in all, yet another very good episode of the life of a famous American. It creates great respect for O'Neill's work without whitewashing his MANY deficiencies. Well worth seeing and interesting.

This well produced survey of the tormented life of a man whom many consider America's greatest play wright suffers perhaps from the zeal of the director and writer. O'Neill's biography is constantly interspersed with repeated descriptions of his tormented mental state, sometimes using the exact words of a previous commenter. There are a number of film clips of various actors reading from O'Neill plays, and these are sometimes repeated verbatim. It looks like a bit of re-editing would have created a shorter documentary with the same impact.

If you have the patience to tolerate what I have described above, and found annoying, it remains a documentary well worth viewing. It could lead to a better understanding of the psyche of Eugene O'Neill. If you would rather let O'Neill speak for himself, just view his latter day great plays, especially MOURNING BECOMES ELEKTRA, A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, and A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN. Another alternative is to view the 1985 PBS documentary "Eugene O'Neill: a Glory of Ghosts". Since it was part of the American Masters series, beginning in 1983, it may be hard to find.

This documentary about the great playwright Eugene O'Neill doesn't sugarcoat the kind of man he was.

It couldn't, because the kind of man he was was largely responsible for some of our greatest plays: Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Iceman Cometh, Moon for the Misbegotten, and countless others, his work growing stronger as he aged.

Long Day's Journey is a biographical play, and it's about a family so dysfunctional they make Honey Boo-Boo's family look like Ozzie and Harriet: a family that's never had a real home, a heroin addicted mother who hates her older, alcoholic son, a disappointed father, and a son who seems to absorb all of it.

Hanging over this is the guilt of losing a two-year-old boy during a time when the mother was traveling with her actor husband.

So like many others, O'Neill came from a sad beginning, something he never really got away from. He abandoned wives and children (as did Charles Dickens), he became a derelict hanging out at a cheap bar (experiences from which he drew The Iceman Cometh), he was totally self-involved and was the poster child for the tortured artist. Lousy for him, great for us.

There is a lot of analysis of O'Neill as a man and how it affected his plays, and some of it is repetitious.

There were also actors - Liam Neeson, Al Pacino, Zoe Caldwell, and Christopher Plummer - who acted out parts of his plays.

It leaves one practically in tears wishing that Christopher Plummer would do James Tyrone on the stage again - he is breathtaking, and I never saw the one he did in London some 40+ years ago. I suppose he wouldn't have the stamina now.

There were photos of the first production, starring Frederic March, Florence Eldredge, Bradford Dillman, and Jason Robards -- Robards went on to play not only Edmund, but James Tyrone, and directed the play. He also starred in The Iceman Cometh. Having seen some of Eldredge's work, she was probably a wonderful Mary.

All in all, an interesting documentary about how several of his plays came about. Though Long Day's was never to see a stage production and not even be published until 25 years after his death, his widow defied all of that, and it was first produced in 1957.

As one person interviewed said, O'Neill probably expected her to do just that. I'm sure he just didn't want to be alive when it was produced.

Let's face it, a lot of the greats were just not nice people: Picasso, Hemingway, Richard Wagner, to name just a few.

As Charles McGrath said in the New York Times, "The cruel thing about art - of great art, anyway - is that it requires its practitioners to be wrapped up in themselves in a way that's a little inhuman."

As for O'Neill, for all the talking the scholars did, I'm not sure in the end anyone really knew what made this man tick. All we know is that art was everything to him, and he created some of the greatest art of all time.