Long Day's Journey Into Night

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.

This is a typically dark, fine-grained O'Neill work that becomes almost overwhelmed with its own moodiness. Hepburn plumbs some psychological depths here as the drug-addicted mother. Richardson is fine as well, but it is disappointing that double-Oscar winner Fredric March, who won a Tony for the role on Broadway, did not play Tyrone is the screen version. We do get to see Jason Robards recreate his role, and his experience clearly comes through. This is continually penetrating vision of a family that perhaps is not as dysfunctional as "normal" families would like to believe. A disturbing film well worth seeing.

Let me be upfront about the whole thing & say that this film is difficult to watch. So much so that it took me multiple sittings to get through it. However, I am still glad that I stuck with it because as far as dysfunctional families go, this is a gold mine. All the characters obviously have familial affection but they can't forgive each other for past indiscretions. Each knows that they are failing to connect as a family but believes it to be someone else's fault. Having known two such families on a very personal level, I am amazed at how close this is to reality!

The matriarch of this family is a drug addict who loves her family dearly. But she also resents them for various reasons: her husband for being a miser & cheating on her, her elder son for being jealous and infecting his younger sibling in childhood (the sibling died of the infection) and her youngest son for the complications surrounding his birth, which led to her addiction. The family too loves her in return but resent her for not having enough strength and self-discipline to overcome the addiction, even though they also indulge in overdrinking! The father resents his sons for being lazy and often compares their 'privileged' upbringing to his own miserable upbringing. His absolute fear of poverty makes him unable to provide proper medical assistance to his family. Besides resenting his parents for their obvious failings, the elder son resents his youngest brother for being better liked by the parents & also for being more talented than him. And if you thought that the matters could not get any worse, the youngest son is diagnosed with TB! This family, which was already doing very poorly, is shaken to its core. And all you can do as a viewer is listen to each and every member & sympathize because they have all reached a point of no return. There is equal parts love & hate in their relationships & even the viewer can see that not much can be done to avoid further heart break & alienation that is soon to follow.

When you read them from a book, Eugene O'Neill's plays seem kind of flat. The dialog seems ordinary and uninspired compared to more poetic U.S. playwrights like Tennessee Williams.

But the brilliant acting in this film version of "Long Day's Journey" - especially the delicately nuanced work of Katharine Hepburn as the mother and a sensitive performance by Dean Stockwell as the younger son - shows me what a magnificent playwright O'Neill was. At times this tragic play seems almost Shakespearean.

"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. ****