Long Day's Journey Into Night

source: Long Day's Journey Into Night

I ran into this film the first time maybe 8 years ago. I had read the play in HS, and at first found it plodding and boring, then was drawn into it very intensely, and went on and read a bunch of other O'Neill, but had never seen any of his work performed. Apparently, there was talk amongst actors about making time disappear when works are really great. This work does that for me, the 3h go by in no time, the whole rest of the world just recedes while it's on. This is the greatest filmed play I've ever seen. I love the direction (Sidney Lumet is one of the most underrated directors of all time), and the 4 performances are superb.) KH is from another planet, gliding in and out of the deluded, once-beautiful Midwestern bud, into the paranoid, addicted victim. I love Ralph Richardson as the father; he perfectly blends the haminess of the actor with the male chuminess, trying to be a father, but also a friend to his sons. Jason Robards is one of the great actors of all time. The first time I saw this movie, the loudest aspects of his part, because they were most in my face, seemed to be where the meat was. Having just seen it again, his whole story of choosing Fat Vi for his night of debauched tenderness in town became the kind of epic poetic center of the film with everything else in orbit about it (looking back all the way to Aeschylus and forward/sideways to Faulkner). Interestingly, O'Neill himself is the least interesting character. That, in itself, speaks volumes about the work.

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.

The film spends one day and night with the dysfunctional Tyrone family. Mary Tyrone (Katharine Hepburn) is an unstable mother addicted in morphine that recalls moments of her life in the past to escape from her reality. The Irish patriarch James Tyrone (Ralph Richardson) is a cheap and alcoholic man and former successful actor. The older son Jamie Tyrone (Jason Robards) is an alcoholic idle man that loves and envies his brother and is blamed by his mother for the death of his younger brother. Edmund Tyrone (Dean Stockwell) is an aspiring writer that has consumption (tuberculosis) and tried to commit suicide. The theatrical "Long Day's Journey into Night" is an adaptation for the big screen of a play and recommended for fans of the author only. For average viewers, it is a long, boring and depressive film with a day of a dysfunctional American family from the beginning of the Twentieth Century. My vote is five. Title (Brazil): "Longa Jornada Noite Adentro" ("Long Journey Into Night")

How fortunate we are to have so fine a production of one of Eugene O'Neill's most personal revelations permanently preserved on film. What marvelous casting: Katherine Hepburn, Sir Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, Jr., and Dean Stockwell. This skillful quartet works together with perfect intonation, assisted ably by Sidney Lumet's perceptive direction and Andre Previn's haunting piano score. If possible see the full-length 174 minute version as originally presented to get the film's full impact.

It's my bias that any film should have some point to its creation. It can amuse, excite, titillate, move to romantic tears, etc. But...is it really enough for a film simply to depress one to death? Even "Angela's Ashes," heretofore the most depressing film I've ever seen, had its rare high points, notably in the epilogue in which the protagonist post-caps his positive life events after the film's ending (this doesn't count as a spoiler, does it?). "But Long Day's Journey" gives us NOTHING to hold onto at the end, with the possible exception of gratitude that we the viewers aren't more like the characters. I was also quite unimpressed with the acting (except for Hepburn)...overacting seemed to be the rule, possibly because it was the only way to squeeze some life from the trite, tired lines. Sorry, guys, and I know that I'll get flayed for this, but this is not a keeper in my book. And to top it all off...it's way too long!

Having discovered O'Neills Mourning Becomes Electra a few months ago, I was interested in viewing this. Long Day just doesn't work in this era, because it's idea of drama is so limited; O'Neill shoe-horns dialogue/conversation into every opening. These characters have logorrhea. They talk everything out, then they break up into smaller groups and talk it out some more, then they move on to other groupings and talk it out some more, finally, as a finale, they talk it out some more. Words, words, words, words, words, words... After 30 minutes, you understand the psycho-dynamics and there's no real point in paying attention anymore. At one point this was controversial stuff, but any man on the street is now extremely familiar with the addictive personality and its resultant enabling, bullying & emotional manipulation. This family's problems are nor compelling. The movie is clearly going nowhere. In every scene they push each other buttons, and say awful things to each other; outbursts of no particular importance arrive about every 8 minutes. Mourning Becomes Electra has somewhere to go, and revelations that matter to the story. LDJiN hashes and rehashes the same points over and over. MBE is even more stagy and dated, but it has some actual shocks to deliver. Hepburn acting 'overwrought' is too familiar from her success. Her hop-head is hysterically inaccurate. She just comes downstairs cheerful and chatty after shooting up. Richardson is by far the worst here; a charter member of the British elocution club. He has an inexpressive stone face, with no perceptible emotional range. Strictly for people convinced that a string of outbursts is the height of drama. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is it's spiritual sibling (and also a slog to watch!). But The Little Foxes is more acid, with superior structure.

Skeletons in the closet weave the essential tapestry that ties this singular family together, drawn by the immortal Eugene O'Neill in a story that was partly drawn by his own life. The Tyrone family represent the American Family at its utmost worst: father James (Ralph Richardson is a broken man, a former theatre actor who committed a specific act of stinginess against his own family and caused its downfall; oldest son Jamie (Jason Robards) is an alcoholic who, while he loves his younger brother Edmund (Dean Stockwell) very much, can't stand his brilliance at writing; Edmund has tuberculosis and is privy to every second in which his family eats itself alive, and mother Mary (Katharine Hepburn) has fallen victim to her addiction to morphine and has a scant hold on her reality. Sidney Lumet, who has brought unto film some of the most powerful dramas screened on audiences, does magic with O'Neill's play, and while the film itself clocks in right under three hours, the intensity of this foursome's relationships with one another never makes it feel that long. All of the actors receive an equal amount of screen time, and display moments of fury and anguish and desperation under duress. Katharine Hepburn, though, lays herself bare with the gamut of emotions she conveys with her role -- forget Dorothy Parker's comment about her acting range going from A to B -- this is her most intense, frightening role, one where her pain surfaces and her own vague knowledge that she is a prisoner to her own addiction taking hold of her, more so because she can't do anything to stop herself and vehemently denies any intervention from her family. Her Mary is a walking ghost, a woman totally lost, aware but not aware. Jason Robards, an actor I've seen in more recent films, brings forth rage and self-pity to his own role as the Cain of this family: when he tells Edmund late in the film to leave because he is dangerous, one look into his eyes and we can see it. Ralph Richardson plays the father who can't help his family and seems somewhat at a loss. Stockwell's Edmund is really the innocent of the bunch, a boy who has to see the outrageous ugliness which dominates his family, who with luck, will survive it. This is a very devastating film to watch because of the slow disintegration of the central characters, and because there are so few of them and no comic relief, all we can do is watch, albeit from an intellectual distance.

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.

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.