Another strip-down medicore presentation from Artisan....This is a landmark brilliant film of perhaps Eugene O'Neill's great play. The directing by Sidney Lumet and the acting by Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell is nothing less than amazing. This has got to be one of the 3 all-time greatest performaces from the late Ms. Hepburn!
Simply one of the most amazing films of the 1960's.
This should have been issued on Criteron. We should have gotten a first-rate restoration job with either a good documentary/back story on the making of the film, or a commentary by the two survivors of the film, Dean Stockwell and Sidney Lumet.
Instead we get a nearly public-domain quality release.
I'm so happy to finally get this important film on DVD...but I'm utterly disappointed at the slap-dash quality one has come to expect from Artisan.
HOWEVER, this DVD release is atrocious. This is close to a three-hour film and they crammed on to one disc. That wouldn't be so bad had they done a new transfer, but this looks like the same one used for the VHS tape. Cropped for the TV screen like the video release, (this was definitely shot in widescreen, according to imdb.com), it's got the same gritty, low-res quality. You could tape this movie off of TCM or Bravo and get better quality. Rent it, tape it, but hold off on buying this until it's given a proper DVD release (if anyone from the Criterion Collection's listening, please license this movie!)
Buy Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) Now
This is a powerful film that's making its long-awaited DVD debut and what do we get -a scratchy print scaled down from widescreen to a 4X3 aspect ratio, essentially the same as its VHS presentation. The price is cheap for good reason ...this is a beauty that's been somewhat stripped of its grandeur.Read Best Reviews of Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) Here
(2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)This is likely Katharine Hepburn's greatest screen performance in a career that spanned over six decades. Tackling Eugene O'Neill's morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone must have been daunting at the time, but this 1962 film version of the playwright's autobiographical masterwork is a blazing showcase for not only her formidable talent but her male co-stars as well. Set right after the turn of the last century, it follows a summer day in the life of the Tyrones, as dysfunctional a family as one could possibly imagine. Ex-actor James Tyrone Sr. is the titular head of the family, a miserly alcoholic actor whose sanctimonious attitude has his family unable to cope with their feelings in constructive ways. His wife Mary is a faded beauty defiantly denying both her condition and that of her youngest son Edmund. Edmund has just returned from a few years on the seas but has contracted tuberculosis. Older son Jamie is a failed actor, a wastrel who has become an alcoholic and resentful of his father's stinginess in not being able to send Edmund to a good sanitarium.The movie is really a series of confrontations and long recollections. As the story progresses, we learn that each of the family members, instead of bonding over Edmund's illness, is gradually retreating into private hellish worlds and that the inability to peacefully cohabitate stems from an inability to move on from events long passed. Even though they are all obviously intelligent people, they refuse to get past their disappointments, and we are left to witness the repercussions of how their choices have affected their relationships and most tragically, how their relationships have informed their choices. What makes spending three hours with this quartet worthwhile is the fact that O'Neill transcends the melodramatic aspects by honing in mercilessly on each one's strengths and frailties. He avoids the talkiness of a stage play by imbuing a sublimely lyrical use of language that captures a profound sense of beauty amid the overwhelming tragedy.
Director Sidney Lumet remains faithful to the text and emphasizes the play's substantial dramatic force by focusing very specifically on the four actors. Hepburn's head-shaking was beginning around this time, and it actually feeds effectively into the character's constant sense of loss and paranoia. She has several great moments, such as Mary's giggly remembrance of her first encounter with James and the demented stupor she displays near the end as she carries her old wedding dress around. A somewhat rigid Ralph Richardson plays James Sr. with appropriate stentorian fervor, though honestly I would have liked to have seen either Fredric March, who originated the role on Broadway, or ironically Spencer Tracy play this role, especially as the play deals heavily with Irish Catholic guilt. Jason Robards has been so inextricably connected with O'Neill in the intervening years that it is no surprise to see him superbly interpret the role of Jamie with alternate flashes of fury and poignancy. As Edmund, Dean Stockwell is a revelation as the O'Neill doppelganger, the emotional core of the play who takes the family's one positive step of forgiving his father and brother for their faults in the climax. Additional credit needs to be given to cinematographer Boris Kaufman whose fluid work here makes the camera an integral part of the experience by lending depth and range to the scenes that could not have been captured onstage. True, it can be an emotionally draining film for the uninitiated, but it is more importantly, a powerful realization of one of the undisputed classics of the American stage.
Want Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) Discount?
Eugene O'Neill finished writing "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in 1940, but when he died in 1951 his will specifically stated the play was not to be produced until at least 25-years after his death. Because his widow relented and gave her permission for this "play of old sorrow written in tears and blood" we are left with this 1962 film and Katharine Hepburn's greatest acting performance. I first stumbled upon this film on late night television twenty years ago and I still remember staying up and crying throughout the emotionally devastating conclusion with the camera slowly pulling back from the family sitting around the table before a stunning series of emotional close ups of the doomed Tyrones.This painfully autobiographical play is set on the long day and night in 1912 when the Tyrone family deals the news that young Edmund (Dean Stockwell) has tuberculosis. The tragedy is compounded by the rest of the family: a father (Ralph Richardson) who is a miser, a brother (Jason Robards, Jr., repeating his stage performance) who finds solace in drink, and a mother who retreats into her addiction to morphine before the night is over. Writing about his own family, O'Neill not only changed their last names to Tyrone but also switched Eugene with Edmund, the name of the infant brother who died. After watching this heartbreakingly painful story you know why the playwright wanted it tucked away until he was long gone.
Hepburn received her ninth Oscar nomination for her role as Mary Tyrone (the award went to Anne Bancroft for "The Miracle Worker"), and the four actors shared the acting award for the Cannes Film Festival along with the principals of "A Taste of Hone" (no clue how they came to that strange pairing). The almost 3-hour film is the complete O'Neill script (the key selling point for Hepburn in taking the role) and was shot by director Sidney Lumet in sequence in 37 days after the cast rehearsed for three weeks. The music score is by Andre Previn and Boris Kaufman was the cinematographer of this black and white film. O'Neill is enjoying something of a revival thanks to Kevin Spacey in "The Iceman Cometh" on Broadway, but when it comes to film this is far and away the best representation of his work. Given that he wrote extremely long plays about the early part of the last century, it is likely we will never see a greater film version of O'Neill than "Long Day's Journey Into Night."
Interesting background tidbit: Hepburn tried to talk Spencer Tracy into taking the role of the father. Tracy, who was already in failing health, turned it down, claiming it was a question of salary (Hepburn received only $25,000 for her part). Some of Tracy's biographers, wondering how one of the greatest actors of the century would have done with one of the greatest plays, have suggested that Tracy was intimidated by the role. Still, it is hard not to fantasize about the "Long Day's Journey Into Night" as a Tracy-Hepburn vehicle.
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