Le deuil sied à Électre

I caught this film on TCM about six months ago and recorded it on my DVR. I loved it! "Mourning Becomes Electra" made in 1947, is long, at just about three hours. At first glance, Rosalind Russell (at age 40) is a bit long in the tooth to play Lavinia; but once you get past that, she is quite good in the part. The scenes between Russell and Katina Paxinou (playing Russell's mother, Christine) were mesmerizing. Michael Redgrave (playing the son Orrin) is a bit stiff in the first part of the movie, but once he goes "crazy" with guilt in the last part, he is brilliant. Raymond Massey, playing the father, is in the film only a short time, but is memorable as Ezra, the war weary husband to Christine. A young Kirk Douglas is good too as Lavina's suitor. This film has it all - murder, greed, dark family secrets, revenge, lust. It is too bad this film is sadly forgotten. It flopped when it opened in 1947 - probably too long and involved for audiences a that time. And too bad Rosalind Russell did not win the Oscar for it - what an injustice. Russell had been considered the favorite to win, but a long shot nominee, Loretta Young won for "The Farmer's Daughter" a far lesser film than this one, in my opinion.

The script reduces the stage original by approximately two-thirds. The cinematography is clunky and the production values are weak. Direction is indifferent and the acting styles are all over the map. Even so, the 1947 MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA is a startlingly powerful film, a melodrama that leaps and crackles and which will hold the attention of discerning viewers through two and a half hours to its remarkably bitter end.

Loosely based on the ancient Greek tragedy THE ORESTIA, Eugene O'Neill's 1931 drama was and is an extraordinary creation. Strangely ritualistic in tone and requiring approximately six hours to perform, it stunned audiences upon its debut, was a powerful factor in O'Neill's winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and remains one of the great pinnacles of American theatre to this day. It is also a warped, sick, and twisted tale of adultery, incestuous affections, blackmail, murder, and suicide, and as such it held Hollywood at bay for close to twenty years.

The story concerns the Mannons, a family that has dominated a small New England town for more than a hundred years, dominating through social status and supposed family and civic duty even as they conceal several internal scandals. The film opens with father Ezra (Raymond Massey) away from home, acting as a leader in the Civil War; in his absence wife Christine (Katrina Patinoux) has taken a lover who visits the house under the guise of courting daughter Lavinia (Rosalind Russell.) When Lavinia discovers the truth, she attempts to blackmail her mother into giving up the relationship--but the attempt backfires into a horrendous cycle of murder and revenge that ultimately destroys the family and drives Lavinia to her her doom.

The script actually does manage to encompass all the primary plot points of O'Neill's original, and although the result is a bit talky in a forced sort of way the story itself possesses a relentless quality that does indeed approximate the stage original. Even more surprisingly, the script makes no effort to soften the incestuous nature of the various relationships that characterize the tale, relationships that increasingly pervert and twist the family as the story progresses. This is dark, dark stuff indeed.

As previously noted, the cast is all over the map in terms of acting style and indeed each of the principles seem to be performing for a different film. Rosalind Russell is distinctly "classic Hollywood;" Michael Redgrave is distinctly "English theatre." Katrina Patinoux, a memorable performer, is Greek and therefore somewhat out of place as the matriarch of a New England family; Raymond Massey, an equally memorable performer, seems to reprise his earlier portrayal of Abraham Lincoln. Each and every one of them, in their own different ways, play at white-hot intensity, and many find the resulting mix too uncomfortable. I myself did not: if anything, I felt it added to and intensified the overall strangeness of the piece.

Eugene O'Neill dramas do not, as a rule, film extremely well: they are too clearly designed for the stage and as such they work best in front of a live audience. All the same, and in spite of its numerous flaws, this is one of the few film versions of an O'Neill play that actually manages to capture the intensity of the stage original. Dark, brooding, and deeply disturbing, MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA deserves a great deal more attention than it has ever received.

When the film failed at the box office, RKO responded by cutting it in re-release. This Image Entertainment DVD restores those cuts, and that is a very good thing indeed. Unfortunately, it is also the only good thing that one can say for the DVD. The print quality is at best mediocre, a bit fuzzy, occasionally streaked, and riddled with artifacts. There are no extras of any kind. But just as the film transcends its own flaws, so too does it transcends this poor transfer. Strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Most of the professional reviews of this unjustly neglected film dismiss it as "stagy", "wordy", and "dull". Yes, it is wordy, if you consider a film entirely propelled by dialogue wordy, and yes, it is stagy if you consider a film largely confined to a single set stagy, with no fancy cutting, camera tricks, or quick editing to disturb or interrupt the flow of language. And yes, at nearly three hours, it is one of the longest film versions of a classic Eugene O'Neill play ever made. (The original play clocks in at six hours!)

I myself have never been able to understand those critics who claim to appreciate great achievements in film and theatre, and yet grow restless at the thought of too much dialogue in a film. Who cares, when the dialogue is written by one of the greatest playwrights this country has produced, and when the storyline is as riveting as this?

O'Neill never actually wrote a suspense drama, but this updated revision of the Electra-Orestes-Agamemnon myth is as close as he ever came to it. The story features elements of murder, revenge, insanity, and more than a hint of incest, and when Rosalind Russell as Lavinia and Michael Redgrave as Orin, her beloved brother, plot together to carry out their scheme, the story becomes as gripping as any suspense film ever made.

There are very few completely calm moments in this film; nearly all of the performances take on a quality of seeming to be on the verge of a total nervous collapse. Some of Rosalind Russell's acting, particularly during the first hour or so, may strike you as slightly over-the-top, especially her facial expression (accompanied by an ominous musical chord) when she sees her thoroughly evil mother Christine (Katina Paxinou) in a lover's clinch with Adam Brant (Leo Genn), an illegitimate relative of the Mannon family, while Christine's husband (Raymond Massey) is off fighting the Civil War, but once Russell becomes the cold, scheming avenger, she is magnificent. Michael Redgrave is slightly uncomfortable with his attempt an an American accent, but he effectively conveys the essential goodness of a conscience-stricken young man on the verge of madness who only wants to do the right thing. Katina Paxinou is despicably nasty and self-dramatizing as the utterly selfish Christine Mannon. Raymond Massey ,so often cast as a villain, gives what is one of the best, most dignified and most restrained performances of his career as Ezra Mannon, head of the family, a man who is supposedly unfeeling and callous (according to Paxinou's character, but then, can we trust her?), but who in the story reveals only a genuinely sympathetic and tragic side of himself. Leo Genn is sincere as Christine's misguided and basically kind lover, and Kirk Douglas, in one of his first film roles, plays Lavinia's bewildered and decent suitor.

Because of the film's disastrous reception at the box office, a barbaric decision was made to cut an entire hour by simply lopping off the entire final section, unnecessarily mutilating a film that deserves to take its place as one of the great dramatic stage-to-film adaptations of all time, and certainly one of the few great film adaptations of a Eugene O'Neill play. His plays, on the whole, have been frequently distorted and/or mutilated for the big screen, unlike Tennessee Williams's, whose works made it relatively unscathed, and even sometimes improved, to film. O'Neill's plays have not fared as well on film as they have on television, but along with 1962's "Long Day's Journey Into Night", and 1940's "The Long Voyage Home", "Mourning Becomes Electra" can be rightfully considered a film classic.

This is one of the best acted, entertaining movies I've ever seen. I don't know why it is so bashed by the media. Rosalind Russell is perfect as the overwrought Lavinia, whose hatred gets the best of her. Russell is simply superb. Michael Redgrave, while not as good as Russell, nevertheless gives substance to a weak role. I thought Katina Paxinou, of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" fame, was excellent too and her scenes with Russell crackle with bitchiness that O'Neill probably didn't intend.

And the best news of all, this magnificent film is finally being released on DVD in December 2004. Never on VHS, laserdisc, or any form except, for God bless it, TCM, this film needs exposure to help its reputation as a great drama and a well-acted film that has been mistreated by the years.

Mourning Becomes Electra did for Rosalind Russell what Nightmare Alley did for Tyrone Power. It established her as an actress with range not previously realized and in her case she got an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. But it was an absolute financial flop.

Dudley Nichols in his adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's marathon play about the Mannon family of New England managed to get it down to almost three hours in length. In its first release that's about how long it was and later when the public proved indifferent to it, it was cut further rendering it totally unintelligible for O'Neill purists.

Rosalind Russell had a three picture deal going with RKO films and one of those films she wanted to do was Sister Kenny whom she had met and was very impressed with. According to her memoirs Dudley Nichols agreed to help with Sister Kenny if she would do Mourning Becomes Electra. She actually wanted to play the role of the mother that Katina Paxinou did, but had to settle for daughter Lavinia.

The film got good critical acclaim and should have stayed in the art house circuit. But RKO put it in general release and it lost money big time. Russell's Sister Kenny biographical film also went the same route and she also got an Oscar nomination. However when Howard Hughes bought RKO he took one look at the red ink beside both of those films and told her to forget that third picture on the deal. No more art house stuff would come out of RKO while Hughes was in charge.

O'Neill work is always long on characterization, but this one could have been better. A very static camera was at work here, always filming scenes from a single perspective. Both the films of Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Iceman Cometh though they are both taking place on one set are far better done for the cinema than Mourning Becomes Electra.

Russell mentioned that her best accolade was a handwritten note from Eugene O'Neill himself about how much he liked her performance. It was better than the Academy Award that everyone thought she would get, but Loretta Young got for The Farmer's Daughter.

Michael Redgrave was nominated for Best Actor, but he also lost to Ronald Colman for A Double Life. It was back to the British cinema for him after this.

Russell and Redgrave are brother and sister, children of Raymond Massey and Katina Paxinou. Paxinou has a lover on the side in Leo Genn who's also courting Russell. Russell finds out and sets loose a whole chain of events that witness the destruction of the family.

Kirk Douglas and Nancy Coleman are another brother and sister named Niles who get involved with the Mannon offspring. This was an early film for Douglas, had he been a bigger movie name then, he might have taken on the role Redgrave had.

No matter how badly executed Mourning Becomes Electra was for the screen if I had a note from Eugene O'Neill praising my performance, that would be all the accolade I'd ever need.