Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) User Reviews

A great film adaptation

[bross3 · 9/10 · 7 November 1999]

Although this film retains the feel of a stage production, this seems to heighten the tension and emphasize how amazing these performances really are.

I've always felt that the play is well-suited to being filmed in black and white. The lack of color seems to bring out even more of the dreary agony that the characters are going through, as well as making the fog seem even more dismal and real.

Because O'Neill's play is apparently autobiographical, the suffering is amplified intensely. This film is a fantastic drama--but because of the length (around 3 hours) and the anguish that the characters go through, you need to be sure you're in the right mood before you sit down to watch it.

Difficult to watch but good character study

[ilovesaturdays · 7/10 · 8 December 2020]

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.

A Long Day's Journey into a movie with star calibre performances of a majorly dysfunctional family.

[rondine · 8/10 · 13 December 1998]

A long descent into the sick heart of a family that is as dysfunctional as any to ever hit the silver screen. This movie covers, in sometimes tedious detail, the idiosyncrasies of each member of the family. Mom, (Kate Hepburn) in an Oscar-worthy performance as the center of the family and a drug addict. She is almost too convincing as someone on the edge. Dad, (Richardson) as the miserly father too cheap to even give his sick wife and son the proper medical treatment. And the 2 sons played by Stockwell and Robards as the demented and damaged off-shoots of 2 very fragile human beings. If you look closely, O'Neil has made it so that it seems each individual is responsible for the way the family has turned out. And so it is with all of us. It is not just our parents but ourselves that effect the family tree and its health or lack of it.

Ye Who Enter Here, Abandon All Hope.

[nycritic · 10/10 · 3 August 2005]

Skeletons in the closet weave the essential tapestry that ties this singular family together, drawn by the immortal Eugene O'Neill in a story that was partly drawn by his own life. The Tyrone family represent the American Family at its utmost worst: father James (Ralph Richardson is a broken man, a former theatre actor who committed a specific act of stinginess against his own family and caused its downfall; oldest son Jamie (Jason Robards) is an alcoholic who, while he loves his younger brother Edmund (Dean Stockwell) very much, can't stand his brilliance at writing; Edmund has tuberculosis and is privy to every second in which his family eats itself alive, and mother Mary (Katharine Hepburn) has fallen victim to her addiction to morphine and has a scant hold on her reality.

Sidney Lumet, who has brought unto film some of the most powerful dramas screened on audiences, does magic with O'Neill's play, and while the film itself clocks in right under three hours, the intensity of this foursome's relationships with one another never makes it feel that long. All of the actors receive an equal amount of screen time, and display moments of fury and anguish and desperation under duress. Katharine Hepburn, though, lays herself bare with the gamut of emotions she conveys with her role -- forget Dorothy Parker's comment about her acting range going from A to B -- this is her most intense, frightening role, one where her pain surfaces and her own vague knowledge that she is a prisoner to her own addiction taking hold of her, more so because she can't do anything to stop herself and vehemently denies any intervention from her family. Her Mary is a walking ghost, a woman totally lost, aware but not aware. Jason Robards, an actor I've seen in more recent films, brings forth rage and self-pity to his own role as the Cain of this family: when he tells Edmund late in the film to leave because he is dangerous, one look into his eyes and we can see it. Ralph Richardson plays the father who can't help his family and seems somewhat at a loss. Stockwell's Edmund is really the innocent of the bunch, a boy who has to see the outrageous ugliness which dominates his family, who with luck, will survive it. This is a very devastating film to watch because of the slow disintegration of the central characters, and because there are so few of them and no comic relief, all we can do is watch, albeit from an intellectual distance.

Frightening study in human disintegration

[mermatt · 22 April 1999]

This film version of the great American play is powerful and devastating. The cast is excellent. Hepburn is able to show the alterations in her character with subtle horror.

This story is a study in how humans lose themselves in the fog of drugs, alcohol, sex, disease, and other escapes from reality. None of the characters is willing to take responsibility for what is happening, and therefore they drift deeper and deeper into the night. The real horror is the fact that they could save themselves, but they never come out of the past or the fog long enough to take the first step.

The emotional impact of the play is incredibly powerful even as it is underplayed. This is one of the few films of a play that really works well and translates the emotions of the stage onto the screen without losing the depth and the catharsis.

The Roots of Eugene O'Neill

[bkoganbing · 10/10 · 8 February 2007]

For what Eugene O'Neill expected to be his epitaph work, he wrote Long Day's Journey Into Night in 1942 with instructions to his third wife Carlota Monterey, that it be not performed until 25 year after his death. We should have first been seeing it in 1977, but the rights reverted to Yale University and they broke the O'Neill instructions and published the play in 1956 and it made it's Broadway debut in 1957. All of the four principal members of the cast got Tony Nominations with Fredric March winning the Tony that year. Wife Florence Eldridge played the drug addicted Mary Tyrone and the sons were played by Jason Robards, Jr. and Bradford Dillman.

Odd that Fredric March who certainly was a movie name was not asked to repeat his performance, but Ralph Richardson certainly fills in for him ably. Jason Robards, Jr. was the only member of the original Broadway cast to repeat his part for the screen as the drunken and whoring older brother. Younger brother Edmund the prototype for O'Neill himself is played here by Dean Stockwell.

However in the only film she did between Suddenly Last Summer in 1959 and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner in 1967 was cast Katherine Hepburn as the mother who because of her drug addiction descends into madness. She got an Oscar nomination, but lost to Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker.

O'Neill when he died was acclaimed as America's foremost dramatist and many will say he is still that today. Long Day's Journey Into Night is short on plot, but long and deep on characterization. The whole action of the play takes place in 1912 on a summer's day at the home of James Tyrone acclaimed matinée idol of a bygone era with Tyrone and his family. Eugene O'Neill wanted to show us where he came from and why he had the attitudes he did and he succeeded beyond even his own imagination.

The Tyrones are the O'Neills. In more ways than one I might add. O'Neill was the family name of the Earl of Tyrone who back in Queen Elizabeth's Tudor England was the uncrowned King Of Ireland. O'Neill knew full well the rank he had attained in his own profession and was claiming literary royalty so to speak.

Ralph Richardson as James Tyrone/O'Neill was an actor of great promise who got acclaim for performing as The Count of Monte Cristo in a dramatization of Alexander Dumas's novel. He took easy success and performed the play so much the public would not see him as anything else. Certainly actors try to avoid typecasting and while the play made him rich eventually the public bored of it and him. Knowing that money was not coming in, he invested frugally into real estate. Some call it frugal, some call it cheap.

During the difficult birth of Eugene/Edmund, Mary Tyrone/O'Neill developed an addiction to morphine, mainly because Richardson went to a cheap quack. The American stage had not seen a descent into madness like this since Jessica Tandy in Streetcar Named Desire. Though she was nominated for this performance and won four Academy Awards for other films, this may be Katherine Hepburn's best work. It's also one of the few substantial women's roles in any of Eugene O'Neill's plays. You will not forget Hepburn in this part.

Jason Robards, Jr. was older brother James Tyrone/O'Neill. He's several years older than his younger brother and there was another son who died in infancy between them. He's not got his brother's talent for writing and as an actor, he's followed his father and taken the easy road to dissipation himself. Both are carousers, but Richardson's a has been, and Robards will become a never was.

The Tyrone/O'Neill family is all recorded through the perceptive eyes of Dean Stockwell. This was Eugene O'Neill's way of taking us into a dark corner of his past, he's letting us know as few humans on the planet ever did as to what made him tick.

Once seen Long Day's Journey Into Night is never forgotten.

A Moving, Faithful Rendition

[harry-76 · 10/10 · 22 March 1999]

How fortunate we are to have so fine a production of one of Eugene O'Neill's most personal revelations permanently preserved on film. What marvelous casting: Katherine Hepburn, Sir Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, Jr., and Dean Stockwell. This skillful quartet works together with perfect intonation, assisted ably by Sidney Lumet's perceptive direction and Andre Previn's haunting piano score. If possible see the full-length 174 minute version as originally presented to get the film's full impact.

Eugene O'Neill's Final Masterpiece

[theowinthrop · 10/10 · 5 August 2005]

His full name was Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, and it sort of explains his background. Born in 1888, his father was James O'Neill, then one of the most promising actors on the American stage. The Gladstone represented (as did the O'Neill) the Irish heritage. O'Neill is an important name in Irish history - a proud name. The O'Neill family was an ancient aristocratic Irish family that ran (as Earls) the county of Tyrone. If you saw THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX / ELIZABETH THE QUEEN with Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, Flynn is sent to Ireland to put down a "revolt" led by Alan Hale, the Earl of Tyrone. Flynn fails in this. Historically Tyrone destroyed at least three English armies and their commanders (Essex was the second one) between 1590 and 1610. He was finally driven out of Ireland in defeat, but he was never forgotten by the Irish people for his bravery and leadership. The Gladstone was in honor of British Prime Minister William Gladstone, who supported (in 1888) Charles Stewart Parnell's Home Rule scheme for Ireland. James O'Neill (like most Irish Catholics) wanted to see his homeland free or self-governing.

I bring this out because the name given by Eugene O'Neill to his stage family (representing his own) is "Tyrone". This is a tip of the hat to his illustrious relative.

O'Neill had had a hard early life. A good looking young man, he had been driven to drink by the disintegration of his family. But he had sufficient stamina to pull himself together and make his name as a dramatist. In fact, to this day, he remains America's greatest dramatist. Much of his best writing (particularly in his last fifteen years) was based on autobiographical material that screamed for staging.

James O'Neill had (as said above) been a leading Shakespearean actor - a possible successor to Edwin Booth as the best one. But in the 1890s, with two living sons and a wife, O'Neill stumbled upon a hack melodramatic version of Alexandre Dumas Sr.'s THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. He soon was making fantastic (for that period) box office in that ramshackle play. He never stopped appearing in it. It was not unheard of (Joseph Jefferson, another actor of that period, kept returning to his role of RIP VAN WINKLE, and Frank Mayo to the play DAVY CROCKETT), but it ruined O'Neill as a Shakespearean. In the meantime, because O'Neill had been a poor man, he tended to do things cheaply to save money. When his wife gave birth to Eugene, it was a difficult birth and the doctor (a cheap one) used morphine to remove the pain. Mrs. O'Neill became hooked.

The oldest surviving son James or Jamie was a disappointment as a newspaper reporter, and became an alcoholic. A middle son named Edmund died in childhood (this is referred to in the movie as the dead middle son "Eugene", a clever switch of names by Eugene O'Neill between his dead baby brother's character and his own stage character. Also Eugene had become a seaman (which would give him material for many of his early plays), but had lived in a flop house (the background for the earlier masterpiece, THE ICEMAN COMETH), and developed tuberculosis (but managed to lick it).

All this has to be kept in mind when watching this film (or just seeing the play or reading it). The family life of Eugene O'Neill was a disaster, and he was honest enough to present it to the world in his last decade in this marvelous play - the first one about a truly dysfunctional family since KING LEAR, only this one is middle class. All four stars are superb in their roles - although to me the performance of Jason Robarts (who became the leading interpreter of O'Neill in the late 20th Century) is the best. Ralph Richardson manages to squeeze some needed humor out of the tightwad James Sr. Katherine Hepburn's performance as the drug addicted Mary Tyrone is heart breaking. Dean Stockwell manages to suggest that maybe he can still break out of this Greek Tragedy family, whose members succeed in impaling each other all the time.

Also take a moment to notice the fifth member of the cast, Jeanne Barr. Her performance as the maid Kathleen is usually not spoken of - but she does nicely in the scene with the drugged Hepburn,who is talking of how she gave up her two deepest wishes when she married Richardson. Ms Barr made only three appearances in film (this was her second), before dying in 1967 - the first cast member to pass away.

great performances in a long play

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 19 April 2016]

Mary (Katharine Hepburn) and James Tyrone (Ralph Richardson) live with their adult sons Jamie (Jason Robards) and Edmund (Dean Stockwell). Their idyllic upper middle class facade hides alcohol and drug addictions by every member of this dysfunctional loving family. They pick at each other over the course of a day.

Director Sidney Lumet puts a camera to this Eugene O'Neill play. These are some of the best ever movie actors doing some compelling work. They are firing off lines like sharp shooters with long range rifles. Nobody is missing a beat. Everybody is brilliant. However, that doesn't make it a compelling cinematic experience. Lumet keeps the play intact which limits its appeal. It becomes more of an act of endurance to stay engage with this family. Its single-minded tone really pushes the audience. Some may find familiarity with this unrelenting onslaught. Others may find comfort in simply walking away.

Katharine Hepburn's triumph

[jnvalente · 10/10 · 1 October 2002]

Let me elaborate a little on this title - I don't think any of the four major players failed to do an exceptional work on this film, I just happen to think Katharine Hepburn's portrayal of Mary Tyrone's character does Eugene O'Neil's play most justice and herself an outstanding tragedienne's performance on film, a reason enough for all of us to be thankful!

Long audience's journey

[n_r_koch · 6/10 · 31 May 2009]

This is about as good a film as could be made from this material, which suffers from the usual O'Neill faults: it's ordinary, yet stilted; the tragedy seems inadequately transformed; and the language works only through its cumulative yield of tension and gloom. (A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, of roughly the same vintage, covers roughly the same ground-- but it's entertaining and funny and gives you lines you remember later. So does the brutal yet entertaining STAGE DOOR, for that matter, but then comedies don't count.) This is the sort of material that can make you feel proud to be an Irish barroom bore.

The actors certainly do good work here, though Stockwell is a little weak in some of his scenes. Hepburn is very good, and this might be her best performance after ALICE ADAMS. Richardson is even better. And Robards comes through in the end. The young actress playing the domestic also makes an impression. The makers rethought the play in terms of a movie, with outdoor scenes and a nice piano score. They did their job and as a motion picture this is a success. It was shot in attractive widescreen B&W but the only version available seems to be a gritty Pan-and-Scan DVD transfer.

Oddly...this seems somehow appropriate for O'Neill.

One tremendously powerful journey

[TheLittleSongbird · 10/10 · 21 April 2021]

Eugene O'Neill's (one of America's finest playwrights, up there with Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller) 'Long Day's Journey into Night' is a hugely powerful work and one of the greats of the 20th century. Being indeed masterful in character writing and character development and the emotion that pulsates throughout is intense and moving. The first act though may test the patience of first time viewers, with its deliberate pace and heavier emphasis on character and words than plot.

This 1962 film adaptation of 'Long Day's Journey into Night' directed by the great Sidney Lumet ('12 Angry Men', 'Network') couldn't have adapted it more perfectly. Managing to be very loyal in detail and spirit to the play without being overly faithful. As far as stage play to film adaptations go, 'Long Day's Journey into Night' to me is one of the finest, it does help that the material is so good, that it is directed by a legendary director and has a fine cast and it is a wonderful high quality film on its own terms. It is very likely to resonate with those who has, or has had, addictions, dysfunctional family relationships or experienced mental health issues either as a suffer or therapist.

'Long Day's Journey into Night' is beautifully filmed for one thing, being expansive enough to not feel too much like a filmed stage play or too claustrophobic (dangers with plays adapted to film), as well as designed with a good appealing on the eyes sense of period. It is directed with a sympathetic and no-nonsense approach by Lumet, who also gives the drama a subtle tension and a searing and not overdone passion. Andre Previn's music is used sparsely but is subtly atmospheric.

O'Neill's writing is hugely intelligent, thought-provoking and complex in the way the characters are written and interact. The film, like the play, is very heavy talk, and it is very uncompromising talk, but it's the kind that is always crucial to every character, their actions, way of thinking and motivations. The story is deliberately paced, but actually never felt dull to me (even the early portions) and has a big emotional impact. Both in a searingly intense and tear-inducingly moving way, not an easy watch but the film is far from bland when it comes to the emotions. 'Long Day's Journey into Night' is long but contrary to others' opinions it isn't overlong, with the play being long and so rich in detail in writing and characterisation that cannot be missed the film needed a long length.

Characters are psychologically fascinating, as usual with O'Neill, they have been criticised for being unlikeable but to me they have always come over as very realistic (like the subject matter itself, so much so it hit home with me). While they have their flaws, then again most characters in most films do, but they are so powerfully and intricately written that it was hard not to relate. 'Long Day's Journey into Night' also has amazing performances. Katharine Hepburn unsurprisingly absolutely sears as Mary and Dean Stockwell was seldom better. Jason Robards' experience in his role shows while Ralph Richardson brings tortured complexity to James.

In conclusion, wonderful. 10/10.

Didn't think too much of it, honestly, but Stockwell and Hepburn are very good

[zetes · 7/10 · 3 July 2011]

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.

Difficult material given careful, seemingly heartfelt film translation

[moonspinner55 · 4/10 · 13 August 2006]

Lapsed-Catholic, Irish-American family living on lakefront Connecticut estate in the 1900s comes apart at the seams: patriarch Ralph Richardson harbors great disappointment in his two grown sons (one growing ill with consumption), and his relationship with deluded, delusional, drug-addicted wife Katharine Hepburn has taken its toll as well. Autobiographical play by Eugene O'Neill can hardly be faulted; it's an American classic on the stage, full of pain and rage and melancholy. Yet the one thing it does lack is a self-effacing sense of humor--anything light or even sarcastic to help the audience wade through the intricacies of this family's strangled tapestry. The play has been preserved intact by filmmaker Sidney Lumet, with every hurtful pause and regretful remark frozen on film. With so many sequences heavy with remorse and pain, the nearly three-hour running time becomes something of a chore. The performances are mostly solid (though I did tire of Jason Robards' constant, disapproving braying), but the handling is all on one note; nothing is toyed with so there are no nuances or revelations. It's all been laid out very carefully, but some may feel it difficult staying with these characters for such a long period. ** from ****

One of the best filmed plays in movie history

[RenoPeters · 13 December 2002]

I just caught an interview with Sam Shephard on Fresh Air where he mentions that this movie was one of the reasons he got interested in the theater. He talked about the great performances of Jason Robards, Ralph Richardson, Dean Stockwell, and Katherine Hepburn. My memory of the movie goes back to the late 60's in Berkeley when I had just seen a performance of the play by the Berkeley Rep and then watched the film shortly thereafter in an on campus showing. I, too, was blown away by these performances. In my mind, they rank up there with the very best in the history of film as an ensemble piece of acting. The direction by Sidney Lumet was outstanding and the screenplay remained true to the original play which has never been a common practice in Hollywood. Perhaps these characters resemble members of my family a little too much but they have not been forgotten in the 30 plus years since I last saw the film.

A Masterpiece

[meldada · 10/10 · 5 May 2014]

Deeply rich with performances for the ages. The director never imposes himself to trample the magnificent writing of Eugene O'Neill. He directs his actors for pitch perfect, highly emotional performances. The camera angles and movements and lighting never draw attention to themselves but support and enhance this deeply engrossing effort. Here is one of the most powerful theatre works committed to film. Ms Hepburn turns in her best performance of her long and brilliant career. She is magnetic. The others too, the men, are all on key. They make acting look easy, but these are very challenging dramatic roles. I will never forget the performances of the men in this film. Jason Robards, Dean Stockwell and Ralph Richardson. They will 'live forever' with this breathtaking movie. For more understanding of this film and others in Sidney Lumet's canon read his great book, Making Movies. He goes into details about directing Ms Hepburn and the acting style of Mr Richardson. He also describes the shooting style employed for this picture.

Tremendous, staggering dramatic achievement

[Catch-52 · 10/10 · 3 November 2000]

It takes patience to sit through a 3-hour long movie, even if it is a re-creation of the greatest work of drama written in this country during the 20th century. I personally took a break in the middle of this film, ate dinner, and then came back and watched the rest of it. But Act IV I saw intact. Thank God. It was one of the most intense and insightful moments I have ever seen in a movie, revealing exactly how the present is inextricably bound up with the past. The lives of the characters are representative of OUR lives. Ralph Richardson and Jason Robards were powerful and shattering. Dean Stockwell was also quietly intense, and only Katharine Hepburn struck an incongruous note with her grotesque performance. Then again, in the context of the film, it makes sense for her character to be split off from the others. Have patience with this film - it takes a _long_ time to get to where it's going, but once it gets there, it has the potential to change the way you look at the world. Andre Previn's brief but haunting piano theme is incredibly effective; Sidney Lumet's direction is stagebound but competent. While it is true that O'Neill may never have written this masterpiece if he weren't a dissolute drunkard, think how many masterpieces he could have written if he'd been sober!

Insane Greatness

[robwms63 · 10/10 · 8 June 2007]

I ran into this film the first time maybe 8 years ago. I had read the play in HS, and at first found it plodding and boring, then was drawn into it very intensely, and went on and read a bunch of other O'Neill, but had never seen any of his work performed. Apparently, there was talk amongst actors about making time disappear when works are really great. This work does that for me, the 3h go by in no time, the whole rest of the world just recedes while it's on.

This is the greatest filmed play I've ever seen. I love the direction (Sidney Lumet is one of the most underrated directors of all time), and the 4 performances are superb.) KH is from another planet, gliding in and out of the deluded, once-beautiful Midwestern bud, into the paranoid, addicted victim. I love Ralph Richardson as the father; he perfectly blends the haminess of the actor with the male chuminess, trying to be a father, but also a friend to his sons. Jason Robards is one of the great actors of all time. The first time I saw this movie, the loudest aspects of his part, because they were most in my face, seemed to be where the meat was. Having just seen it again, his whole story of choosing Fat Vi for his night of debauched tenderness in town became the kind of epic poetic center of the film with everything else in orbit about it (looking back all the way to Aeschylus and forward/sideways to Faulkner). Interestingly, O'Neill himself is the least interesting character. That, in itself, speaks volumes about the work.

An American Classic Cleanly Filmed, Stunningly Acted

[EUyeshima · 10/10 · 5 March 2006]

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.

Sad, depressing and thankfully more or less irrelevant

[christopher-underwood · 6/10 · 21 March 2021]

I don't feel that the reason I found this so difficult to enjoy or even appreciate fully was so much the fault of Sidney Lumet as the original writer, Eugene O'Neill. This is a fraught and depressing piece, suffering very much from changing times and values. Back in the fifties when this was written there may well have been families (Mr O'Neill's probably) that suffered in such a way, partly because an individual sense of ignorance and shame but more particularly the far too great a presence of the Catholic church. This was never really the case in England at the time and even in the US has far less significance. Certainly substance abuse has gone mainstream and for good or bad the misuse of prescription drugs appears common place in the US and certainly would not be considered such an central element in a family's destruction as seen here. Sad, depressing and thankfully more or less irrelevant. Katharine Hepburn seems made for the role while Ralph Richardson struggles with much of his nonsense lines.

Rattling the Gates of Hell

[wes-connors · 10/10 · 16 November 2008]

Delusional doper Katherine Hepburn (as Mary Tyrone), miserly patriarch Ralph Richardson (as James Tyrone), cynical son Jason Robards (as Jamie Tyrone), and tubercular son Dean Stockwell (as Edmund Tyrone) play four theatrical ghosts in an alcoholic fog, at the gates of Hell. If you watch carefully, you are bound to see, unveiled and unraveled, four people you know - along with playwright Eugene O'Neill, who (as "Edmund") explains:

"The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. You'd never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself."

Sidney Lumet's film version of O'Neill's autobiographical "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is one of a handful of "great American play" adaptations which must be considered a peak for the genre. These "stage to movie" dramas began with the "talkies", but were stalled by the Hollywood production "code". Decades later, they broke down censorship barriers quite artfully. This "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is one of the very best. Watch it, with great concentration, every twenty-five years or so…

********** Long Day's Journey Into Night (5/62) Sidney Lumet ~ Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, Dean Stockwell

Heavy handed, overacted, predictable

[sgoldgaber · 6/10 · 14 January 2003]

In 1962 this movie may have come to Americans as a revelation about failed dreams. But, as of 2003, it comes across as very heavy handed, and cliche. Every character overacts in presenting their tragic fate, whining about how they were cheated of life by one another.

On the one hand it's the actors who are trying to play roles too big for their britches. Dean Stockwell is particularly inept in his monologue about experiencing life intensely. He is better just playing the role of a wide-eyed kid, without any depth. Jason Robards brings absolutely no character or originality to his depiction of a drunk. Ralph Richardson's character is a ham, so I can't exactly blame him for continuously hamming it up. Still, you'd think he'd have been able to bring a little more depth when his turn at the revealing monologue came. Katharine Hepburn, of course, is completely overwrought throughout the film. I guess this should be excused because the characters are inebriated throughout half the film, but they're not even convincing at that. The characters are just mouthpieces for O'Niel to tell his hard-luck tales, which could be told better by being shown and not just told through monologues.

So the fault of the film does not lie completely in the acting. There are some similarities between Eugene O'Niel's themes and Checkov and Strindberg, but the inferiority of the American playwright is clearly apparent. O'Niel treats the themes of marriage, family, codependancy in a much more superficial manner. The characters that O'Niel dreamt up are also very two dimensional and cliche.

Morphine addiction is also presented inaccurately. Basically, Hepburn winds up acting even more drunk than the other drunks in the movie, and whines and carries on even more than they do. This might have fooled the average moviegoers of 1962, but just winds up looking ridiculous to today's audiences, who are used to much more realistic depictions of opiate use and abuse. The character's shock and upturned noses at "hop heads" and "dope fiends" seem equally ridiculous.

All of this just shows that the movie really isn't about opiate addiction, or even alcoholism (which is what the opiate addiction is dressed up as). It's about wasted lives and being dealt a bum hand (oh no! echoes of the movie's corny slang are creeping in!). Unfortunately, none of these character's lives have been really all that bad. So the movie winds up being, unconsciously, about self-pity. The characters sit around and pity themselves for three hours. I can get an equivalent three hours of whining by hopping over to the corner bar. This is why O'Niel will always be a minor playwright, and another reason for this movie falling on its cliche 1962 behind.

Four For Guilt Trips

[writers_reign · 9/10 · 23 June 2020]

According to your point of view Eugene O'Neill is accused of or credited with dragging the American Theatre into the twentieth century/creating the American Theatre single handedly. The facts are documented: prior to O'Neill theatre in America comprised European imports - Viennese operettas, Shakespeare, Wilde, and 62 melodramas of New Yorker Clyde Fitch that barely outlived the author (Fitch died in 1909). O'Neill offered Naturalism, Expressionism, flesh-and-blood characters rather than cardboard cutouts and arguably paved the way for Sydney Howard, Robert E. Sherwood, Philip Barry, Clifford Odets. Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. If you are familiar with his life - his father, James O'Neill, had known crippling poverty in Ireland, become an acclaimed Shakespearean actor ranked alongside Edwin Booth, bought the rights to The Count of Monte Christo, toured it for years making a fortune but emasculating his talent. His elder son was an alcoholic waster, his wife, Ella, suffered a difficult birth of the younger son, Eugene, was given morphine and became hopelessly addicted - you will get that much more from Long Day's Journey Into Night. In setting it down on paper O'Neill followed two aids to the craft: write what you know and compress the events of days, weeks, months, even years into two hours or so, telescoping time. The four Tyrones, mother, father, two sons, clearly lacerated themselves over half a lifetime but O'Neill heightens the agony by staging it in one endless day. Both writing and acting are beyond praise. O'Neill diedin 1953 yet he is the only credited writer so we have to assume Lumet filed the text of the play as performed in the theatre. This is an invaluable record of a masterpiece.

Whipsaw emotions beyond ability of any actor

[jlogajan · 7/10 · 12 August 2006]

I chanced onto this starting with scenes between Robards and Richardson and then watched it through several scenes with all four of the main characters.

You could set your watch by the regularity of the emotional 180 degree turns. It became too patterned, to formulaic. Everyone including Hepburn was called on to switch in mid-sentence from angry to forgiving and back again, or some other pair of opposing emotions.

Yes, that happens in real life, but not 10 times a minute.

I don't fault the actors, they gave as convincing a go at is as would be humanly possible. But the end result was unconvincing, even a bit more than irritating. One could never forget they were watching a play and not real life.

The Long, Boring and Depressive Saturday Afternoon with a Dysfunctional American Family

[claudio_carvalho · 5/10 · 16 January 2016]

The film spends one day and night with the dysfunctional Tyrone family. Mary Tyrone (Katharine Hepburn) is an unstable mother addicted in morphine that recalls moments of her life in the past to escape from her reality. The Irish patriarch James Tyrone (Ralph Richardson) is a cheap and alcoholic man and former successful actor. The older son Jamie Tyrone (Jason Robards) is an alcoholic idle man that loves and envies his brother and is blamed by his mother for the death of his younger brother. Edmund Tyrone (Dean Stockwell) is an aspiring writer that has consumption (tuberculosis) and tried to commit suicide.

The theatrical "Long Day's Journey into Night" is an adaptation for the big screen of a play and recommended for fans of the author only. For average viewers, it is a long, boring and depressive film with a day of a dysfunctional American family from the beginning of the Twentieth Century. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Longa Jornada Noite Adentro" ("Long Journey Into Night")