The Long Voyage Home

Dark in tone, primarily enclosed on sound-stage, no major stars -- and Eugene O'Neill not an easy transfer from stage to screen -- this project does not have much working in its favour. But there's a great team at work here -- cameraman Gregg Toland, writer Dudley Nichols, director John Ford -- and an Irish-inflected ensemble, much like a troupe of players transported from Dublin's Abbey Theatre.

The Long Voyage Home compresses four short O'Neill plays into a single narrative, updated from World War I to the onset of World War II. The plays have been softened in language, and the overriding doom-and despair motif is lightened with bits of Irish-style shenanigans. Still, the considerable fidelity to O'Neill's text is one of the pleasures of viewing.

We are seldom outside the studio soundstage, but even with process shots and projections, the filmmakers still create the illusion of the open sea. The storm sequences have considerable impact, even for the contemporary viewer. Some sequences here are worthy of Ford's earlier spectacle The Hurricane, albeit on a smaller scale.

Toland's striking camerawork, with its deep focus and Expressionist lighting, gives the film a foreboding, unsettling quality, well suited to the precarious nature of the wartime voyage from the West Indies to England.

There's a likeable interplay among the actors. I get a bit tired of John Quelan with his whining falsetto brogue, and to an extent smart aleck Barry Fitzgerald with his supercilious chin. But I engage easily with Thomas Mitchell's bossy, streetwise good nature, and especially Ward Bond, who, contrary to his usual gruff, rough-edged manner, gets some soulful moments as the unlucky sailor named Yank.

Youthful John Wayne is surprisingly right as the Swedish sailor on his long voyage home, perhaps the pivotal member of this crew, attached to one another for better or for worse. He and dockside bar-maid Mildred Natwick share a few poignant moments in the last part of the film.

From a modern perspective, some sentiments and attitudes are incorrectly expressed, but in the period, Long Voyage Home admirably gives O'Neill a measure of 'realism' and respect from Hollywood. It is the only O'Neill film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar (and 5 other awards).

John Wayne is misleadingly top-billed ,presumably to bring in the crowds who thought they were going to see typical Wayne heroics in this one.He is actually part of an excellent ensemble cast in this film,which has seamlessly adapted by Dudley Nichols from a group of one-act plays by the great Eugene O'Neill. Nichols' writing is so good that unless you're an O'Neill expert,it is VERY difficult to tell where O'Neill leaves off and Nichols takes over,except perhaps in the episode involving British actor Ian Hunter (in the performance of a lifetime) as a presumed German spy. The plays,written in the early 1900's,have been updated to take place during WW II,but the propaganda angle is very tastefully handled and almost non-existent;in fact,here Nichols and director John Ford show great respect for the integrity of O'Neill's plays.

The cast is excellent,but Wayne actually hasn't got much to do in comparison with his other films,and this is a film of dialogue,not action.Perhaps that's why the previous reviewer found it interminable. [John Wayne uses a Swedish (!) accent in this movie,which he actually does quite well--don't laugh!] The most intense acting is done by Thomas Mitchell (Scarlett O'Hara's dad in "Gone With The Wind") and Barry Fitzgerald,who are actually the stars of the movie.And director John Ford shows us what a true master of his craft he is by equalling Hitchcock's accomplishment in "Lifeboat" in keeping the action confined to a small space without making it seem tiresome. The back-and-white photography is stunningly good--the best American photography in a black-and-white 1940's American film,aside from "Citizen Kane",of course.

John Wayne fans shouldn't pass this one up,and all non-fans should still enjoy this fine film.

The Long Voyage home is not a typical film from this period. It differs in that it focuses on an ensemble cast instead of on a star. That's common nowadays, but not back then. Ford's Stagecoach, made the previous year, had quite an ensemble cast, but the film was always focused on Ringo and Dallas. Here, John Wayne is just one of the stars. Thomas Mitchell, who played Doc Washburn in Stagecoach, has a role that's as big as Wayne's in Voyage. Others are as prominent.

The plot is also pretty tenuous and episodic. And, unlike most films of the time, the focus was not on a goal, but just on the events and lives of the seaman aboard the Glencairn. We see them sail through the war-torn Atlantic, between the U.S. and Europe. They have fun, they fight, they talk about home. It's all rather gentle and beautiful, very subtle. The script is great, which is probably due to Eugene O'Neil, for of whose plays this film is based on (they are blended together seamlessly).

The actors are marvelous. Mitchell and Wayne are probably the best known, but there are also Ian Hunter, Barry Fitzgerald, John Qualen, Ward Bond, Mildred Natwick, and many other great character actors. John Wayne was probably the draw, considering how popular Stagecoach had made him, but, as I said, his role is not out in the front. In fact, he doesn't have many lines. His schtick is that he is a Swede who can't speak English well, so he is generally pretty quiet (Wayne can't muster the best Swedish accent, either, so that's kind of a good thing!). He has one great scene where he has some long bits of dialogue. But even without the dialogue, he emotes so well in his face. I knew his character intimately by the end of the film. We don't often think of Wayne as a great actor, but he certainly was. Although The Searchers probably contains his best role, The Long Voyage Home would certainly be worth a major mention when talking about his career.

If you could say that there is a single "star" of this film, that would have to be Greg Tolland. Of course, he photographed Citizen Kane in the next year, as well as Ford's Best Picture winning How Green Was My Valley and The Grapes of Wrath. The cinematography is some of the most impressive to be found in the American cinema. John Ford himself is just as much the star of The Long Voyage Home. He definitely put his heart into this one. The direction is beautiful, artful. It is as good here as it is in The Grapes of Wrath, My Darling Clementine, and The Searchers, that is, it is one of his very best films, if not THE best. To date, it's the only Ford film that made me shed tears. 10/10.

Reportedly, John Ford's film of The Long Voyage Home was Eugene O'Neill's favorite of all filmed versions of his plays, and it is no task to see why. The worlds of Ford and O'Neill overlap in their use of sentiment, tragicomedy, and the sons of old Ireland. This episodic collection of stories, taken from several short plays written by O'Neill and based on his own seafaring life, does what both O'Neill and Ford do best--unveil the poetry and tragedy of simple men. Granted, Ford outsentimentalizes O'Neill, who can be far darker than Ford ever dared, but he comes by it honestly--no Capra-corn here. The photography and sound bring a hyper-reality to this tale of merchant sailors, fearful for their lives, argumentative yet loving, full of weakness but capable of strength and honor. The performances are uniformly splendid. John Wayne, in a supporting role, does quite well with an unusual part, a lonely Swedish sailor, and his accent is much better than he is usually given credit for. But this is no star vehicle. The ship is the star, and the lives of its men resound with meaning and melancholy. An extraordinary film experience, especially for the patient and thoughtful among us.

The Long Voyage Home (1940)

Any movie with Gregg Toland behind the camera is worth watching, with an emphasis on the visual experience. From Wuthering Heights (1939) to the Little Foxes, Ball of Fire, and Citizen Kane (all 1941), in three years, Toland lifted (again) the standards of the best Hollywood could do. This isn't just me saying this, and of course there are other great cinematographers, but if you've seen these movies you know they are exceptional. I falls right in the middle of this great stretch, and it has the revered John Ford directing, letting Toland do his thing, right from the first scene.

This is a solid, sometimes moving, sometimes dramatic movie, for sure. But the long first part is a composite of manly clichés: drinking, fighting, and womanizing. It's all in good fun, in a way, and the exoticness is made to sell movies. But there's quite a lot of nothing going on beyond seducing native women in some unnamed distant land. The dancing and fighting are filmed with Toland perfection, but it turns quickly to farce, or stereotype.

Thomas Mitchell is a lively Irishman in his best form, and John Wayne is an improbable Swede, and doesn't stand out much from the bunch except toward the end, when he is a block of wood with a bad accent. The story is a series of misunderstandings and friendships, but since the plot is made of four different Eugene O'Neill plays (from 20 years earlier), there is a little discontinuity to it all.

All of this is set during that strange cusp between World War II beginning in Europe and the U.S. still not joining in. The ship is carrying ammunition, and hints of things that really matter are given right at the start, with some news reports crackling into the seeming isolation of the ship. As the captain says as they are to depart from New York with the military cargo, "If it doesn't get there it'll be missed. But we won't."

Isolationism gets a more famous treatment in Casablanca two years later, after the Americans are already at war, so in a way, a big name movie like this had more potential influence on American sentiment. It's fascinating to see this Walter Wanger/John Ford/John Wayne collaboration after their breakthrough Stagecoach the year before (producer, director, star). But the stakes are raised, and the production level is much higher.