NekoHomey
Purely Joyful Movie!
Bea Swanson
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Logan
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
HotToastyRag
In Eugene O'Neill's play, Katharine Hepburn plays the fragile, weak matriarch in a highly dysfunctional family. Just as the title implies, the entire story takes place during one day, and just as the title implies, it's an incredibly long day. Ralph Richardson is the pontificating former actor who longs for his glory days, Jason Robards is the hard-drinking older son with contempt for every member of his family, and Dean Stockwell is the youngest son who's ill but has just as much of a temper as his healthier counterpart.While the family awaits the doctor's diagnosis of Dean's persistent cough, they're also watchful of Kate. She's in perpetual denial, refusing to believe her son is sick, refusing to acknowledge her former battle with morphine addiction, and refusing to admit tat she might be succumbing to temptation again. Each actor has long, boring monologues that don't contribute to the plot; each actor has long, emotional outbursts that show the audience a highly trained therapist probably couldn't help them. This is the type of play that people who say, "I don't like plays" refer to.While there are plenty of reasons that could make you feel like you should watch this film—famous actors, famous playwright, famous director—there isn't really any reason to watch it if you're actually looking for an enjoyable evening. Rent The Glass Menagerie instead if you want to see Kate in a dramatic play; it's actually good instead of pretending to be.
Ilpo Hirvonen
Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), based on a famous play by Eugene O'Neill, was Sidney Lumet's first hit after the enormous success of his debut feature 12 Angry Men (1957). It is a Bergmanian chamber drama where nothing specific happens but, on the other hand, everything does. Lumet himself liked the film a lot and I myself consider it as his finest achievement. He was to develop his self-conscious aesthetic style even further in his subsequent films and the thematics of anxiety culminated in his Cold War thriller Fail-Safe (1964). This film is a journey from ostensible happiness to honest grief and, during the journey, secrets and emotions are revealed; and discussed.As said, nothing particularly extraordinary takes place in the film and it only includes a few characters; happens at one milieu and in one day. A deterministic drama, so to speak, which bears a striking resemblance with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), to only name a few. At its heart, Long Day's Journey Into Night is a story about people who are dissatisfied with their lives and, therefore, are unable to accept the true nature of their light being. Through expressionistic lighting, fast-paced editing and great cinematography, Lumet reflects the psychological depth of the situations; and the anxiety of the characters. Together with his standard cinematographer Boris Kaufman, he delimits the latitude of his characters narrower and narrower; inevitably making them prisoners of the state.The film breaks down the illusion of the idyllic bourgeois happiness and, furthermore, it deals with loneliness, loveless love, agony and the vacancy of modern life. It is a very stylistic film indeed and the construction of the state is, in fact, a combination of long shots with dynamic movement of the camera and static close-ups with rapid editing. What is more, the aesthetics is rhythmed by the distressing sound of the fog horn; and by the wiping light of the lighthouse. In the end, as the light severely sweeps around the physic state; the walls around the characters begin to disappear; slowly into nonexistence.
zetes
It doesn't help much that I watched this acclaimed film version of a Eugene O'Neill play right after suffering through a far more obnoxious filmed play (William Gibson's Two for the Seesaw, made the same year). Frankly, I just don't care for the theater, and these films underline pretty well the reasons why. I look at theater as a bunch of people (or two, in the case of Seesaw) on stage bellowing at each other for however many hours (three, in this film's case) while somehow refraining from falling victim to laryngitis. Long Day's Journey Into Night suffers from a lot of clichés: drug addiction, alcoholism, disappointment in lives, and, God help me, consumption (which I thought was just a disease made up by poets and playwrights, but it turns out it's just tuberculosis; "consumption" does sound cooler). Lumet tries to inject some filmmaking into the picture (as he did wonderfully with the equally stagebound 12 Angry Men a few years earlier), mostly in its beautiful final moments (the cinematography, I must admit, is fine throughout, though I really like '60s black and white), but mostly it's very static and is comprised of people talking steadily for the 180 minutes, give or take about three minutes of silence (the film's best moments). I'll give this a slight pass, however, for the acting, as stagebound as it may be. The acting to which I refer is not just Katharine Hepburn's, though hers was very good, too. Dean Stockwell, in my estimation, gives the film's best performance. Jason Robards and Ralph Richardson round out the cast. I thought they were both a bit overwrought, but not bad.
Maddyclassicfilms
Long Days Journey Into Night is directed by Sidney Lumet, is written by Eugene O'Neill and is based upon his play. The film stars Jason Robards, Katharine Hepburn, Dean Stockwell and Ralph Richardson.This is the story of how one upper class family slowly falls apart. Catholic convent educated Mary Tyrone(Katharine Hepburn)is the long suffering wife of cold,mean and miserable James Tyrone(Ralph Richardson).His obsession with keeping a tight fist around the families cash has caused more misery and tragedy than they can cope with.Mary for many years has been a drug addict and one summers afternoon she takes up the habit again unable to cope with news of her youngest sons illness.The youngest members of the family are alcoholic and strong willed poet Jamie(Jason Robards)and the young brother he adores Edmund(Dean Stockwell).Edmund has caught consumption and is gravely ill,he Jamie and his father try and hide it from Mary but she suspects and just can't handle it.Jamie argues with his father over his reluctance to send Edmund to the best doctors due to his watching the money so carefully.After getting a grave consultation and being ordered to a sanatorium the men arrive home to more pain than they can deal with and as afternoon turns into night hatred,fear,declarations of love and anger are revealed as they struggle to cope with or ease the pain of their situation.The relationship between Jamie and Edmund is the highlight of the film, Jamie's two great loves in life are booze and Edmund,who is the one thing in life that keeps him human and allows him moments of being nice and normal.However he resents him due to the fact his difficult birth started their mothers long use of drugs.The scene where he explains all this to Edmund is heartbreaking and electrifying and Jason gives such an intense and haunted performance that it's a shame he didn't win an award.Perhaps a little too theatrical at times(Ralph certainly is)it all adds to the riveting effect of the film as you are dragged into this battleground with this damaged group of people.Also starring Jeanne Barr as their young maid Kathleen,Long Days Journey Into Night will move and grip you in equal measure and features some career best performances,without a doubt this is a must see.
