Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962)

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is an American film first released in 1962, directed by Sidney Lumet.  The film stars Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, Dean Stockwell and Jeanne Barr.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Outwardly, the Tyrones are a typical middle class American family living in New London, Connecticut.  The year is 1912 and the father, James, looks back on his career as an actor with a mixture of pride and dismay.  His wife, Jeanne, has become withdrawn and has resumed her habit of taking morphine, which she began shortly after the birth of her second son, Edmund.  The oldest son, Jamie, has tried to follow in his father’s footsteps but, lacking the talent and enthusiasm needed to be a successful stage actor, he has taken to drinking heavily.  Meanwhile, Edmund has contracted tuberculosis and has to be sent away to a sanatorium if he is to stand a chance of surviving.  The family is riven with recrimination and guilt.  James’s stinginess is resented by both his wife and his sons, whilst James’s disappointment with his two sons is all too evident...

With its riveting performances and faultless mise-en-scène, this adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical play offers the most intense and harrowing of movie experiences.  This is the film that earned Katharine Hepburn her reputation as a great tragedian and allowed her to tackle far more demanding dramatic roles in the autumn of her career.  It is impossible to watch Hepburn in this film and not be moved to tears by the extraordinary pathos and tragic humanity that she brings to her role.  Ralph Richardson is no less impressive as Hepburn’s co-star, vividly conveying the torment of a man who regards his life as a failure and cannot prevent himself from blaming others, even those nearest to him, for this failure.  Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell are exemplary supports to these great performers, the latter’s innocence and wraith-like quality making an appropriate counterpoint to the earthiness and moral decrepitude of the other family members.

Although in its uncut (and recommended) version it runs to just under three hours, Long Day’s Journey Into Night never presents an opportunity for the spectator to get bored or distracted.  Once the film has taken hold of you (which it does very quickly), you are hooked, right until the very last shot.  Sidney Lumet’s minimalist direction, the claustrophobic sets and the atmospheric cinematography lend an aura of confinement and sterility that perflectly encapsulates the nature of the human drama being played out.  The protagonists are bound to one another in a web of mutual dependency and mutual loathing.  That they love one another is never in doubt, but there is also a dark and bitter resentment in each of their hearts that frequently manifests itself in tirades and gestures of cruellest acrimony.  This is the archetypal dysfunctional family, but we see far more than that.  Here are the bleak and dismal failings of the human condition, exposed to us like decaying flesh rotting in the hot summer sun.  As Dean Stockwell’s character puts it, we are such stuff as manure is made on, although we may like to think otherwise.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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