Long Day's Journey Into Night

Starring:Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, Dean Stockwell, Jeanne Barr
Director: Sidney Lumet
Studio: Republic Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

Long Day's Journey Into Night
Hepburn will blow you away
A Long Dysfunctional Collapse in Oblivion
Journey Into "Home" Life
Awful journey into the night of the times!

Long Day's Journey Into Night
Starring: Katharine Hepburn , Ralph Richardson , Jason Robards , Dean Stockwell , and Jeanne Barr
Director: Sidney Lumet
Manufacturer: Republic Pictures
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Suddenly, Last Summer

ASIN: B0001US6DM
Release Date: 2004-05-11

Customer Reviews:

Long Day's Journey Into Night.......2007-06-28

Sidney Lumet's slow-burning adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's semi-autobiographical play depicts a theatrical family's slow disintegration with haunting precision. Ralph Richardson is ideally cast as the fading family patriarch, while both Robards and Stockwell (O'Neill's proxy) are superb as the two sons, each consumed by their own afflictions. Hepburn executes a tour-de-force as the fragile, brain-addled Mary Tyrone, a spectral symbol of the family's decay from within. Lumet wisely sticks to the letter of the play, and the results are unforgettable.

Hepburn will blow you away.......2006-10-16

There is no denying the brilliance of this. Everything from the ground up, of this film is amazing: material - O'Neil's play is one of the finest pieces of drama ever written; the performances are first class - among them, and most notable, Katharine Hepburn - absolutely mind blowing, its staggering to think this is the same person that did The Iron Petticoat, however here Hepburn is in top form...at her brilliant best (which she was for most of her career, really only the occasional Iron Petticoat, Spitfire fiascos - other than that, the greatest actress ever. The director, Sidney Lumet does a fine job directing it simply, but effectively.

All this combined...makes this an incredible picture. One of the finest.

Something that is interesting that I noted while reading Hepburn's autobiography "Me: Stories Of My Life" is the fact that this was rehearsed for many weeks in a warehouse, and then shot largely in sequence so the actors could perform long scenes, instead of having to keep cutting. In the end, we are basically seeing a theatre quality performance. There is a very real, raw, live feel to it - strikingly effective.

As for what the other reviews said about poor dvd quality: I cant say I really noticed that at all. I found the WHOLE thing brilliant.

A Long Dysfunctional Collapse in Oblivion.......2006-08-15

I came away from viewing "A Long Day's Journey into Night" with the impression that I had seen a masterful performance. My negative impressions were with the script. I have enjoyed Eugene O'Neill's plays but confess that, like Tennessee Williams, I'm not inspired by his work. In "Long Day's Journey", the aspect that confounded me the most was the number of times that different actors cursed a fellow family member and reconciled within the next 30 seconds. If these charactors merely learned to count to ten before expressing their thoughts, this could have been a short three act play. This self-induced emotional roller-coaster reminded me of a boss or two that I had in the past. From them I learned to disregard both praise and criticism when displayed arbitrarily. I guess this aspect made me tend to disregard the emotions on display in "Long Day's Journey". On the other had, the cast was certainly up to the task of acting out those emotions. Each of the four main characters had his or her turn with their emotional outbursts. Katherine Hepburn probably stood out the most with her scenes and it's surprizing that hers was the only Oscar nomination to come out of this film.

What is the point of this play? Well, my take on it is that it is the story of how a family of four disintergrates by each following their own path towards destruction. The irony is how they had the power to reinforce each other but chose the opposite approach. I suppose that is the explanation for the frequent emotional roller-coasters that frustrated me. O'Neill showed us that each character was both devil and angel to his family members. Where was the strength to come from with a supporting cast like that? Ironically, in this autobiographical play, the person with the gravest challenge ended up with the best outcome. Of course, that wasn't in the play or movie; it was in the life of the playwright. Depending on how autobiographical this play actually is, it may go a long way in explaining O'Neill's pessimistic outlook on life.

Journey Into "Home" Life.......2005-11-30

The 1962 classic film takes a drastic look inside a family that has various issues within the household. Immediately the audience is introduced to Katharine Hepburn, playing the role of the Mary Tyrone. She captures the role of a mother struggling with a morphine addiction perfectly. In the beginning of the film there are suspicions from other members of her family if she is staying clean. The father, played by Ralph Richardson, tries to keep concerns of the family away from his wife in order to help in her recovery. Richardson does a great job with his character in showing the audience the ongoing strain of a husband that has to deal with his wife's emotional rollercoaster she continually invites her family on. The eldest brother is smart. He is tired of pretending that everything is alright. He is tired of excusing his mother's behavior, and acting like his brother isn't nearly as sick as he looks. The youngest brother is suffering from the consumption and is grappling with his own sickness as well as his father's choice not to pay for a good doctor. The audience is over taken by the issues the family is working through, and the positions of each character in regards to what is taking place around them. There is a continuous motif of denial. Denial of emotions, issues, and acknowledging what is occurring inside the "home". The actors bring issues of drugs, alcohol, money and sickness to life in a time where topics examined in the film were not typical discussions for the dinner table. Despite the family's anger towards one another, it's obvious there is a basic need to come together. The cast is excellent and the story is fascinating making the overall film to be magnificent, and highly recommended.

Awful journey into the night of the times!.......2005-11-21

Sidney Lumet confessed without hindrances his profound admiration by the artistic presence of Carl Dryer and how his films determined and affianced his vocation as filmmaker. This brief introduction can help us to understand much better (thinking in the memorable Dryer ` Days of wrath) the final decision who guided to Lumet to undertake this awful and brutal living nightmare around the members of a family: She is an serious drug addict, her son alcoholic and the other is dying of tuberculosis.

With such premise it is so easy to imagine and conclude we will watch a complex picture loaded of visible depressive character and disturbing sordidness. The luxury cast was decisive to arrive to secure port. Katherine Hepburn and Richardson are more than admirable in this classic adaptation of Eugene O Neil, the merciless eye, the speaking trumpet of bad news, the ineffable inquirer of a society in crisis, like Baudelaire in France, Papini in Italy, Becket in Ireland or Strindberg in Sweden who reveled the harrowing Expressionism literary, showing the rotten entrails without piety.

Mature, haunting and powerful film that strikes over and over on our spotted conscience with an only objective, to beat the soul through the catastrophe for reaching the cathartic experience.

Average customer rating:

Definitive Version
Hard to watch
Great Performances, Great Play, Great DVD
Long Days Journey Review
An uninteresting but educational masterpiece

Long Day's Journey Into Night
Starring: Laurence Olivier , Constance Cummings , Denis Quilley , Ronald Pickup , and Maureen Lipman
Director: Peter Wood
Manufacturer: Bfs Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Similar Items:

Long Day's Journey Into Night
Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (Broadway Theatre Archive)
Long Day's Journey Into Night
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ASIN: B00009WVME
Release Date: 2003-10-21

Customer Reviews:

Definitive Version.......2006-04-11

Sir Laurence Olivier is magnificent in this version of the O'Neill family drama. Produced for television and shot on video tape.

Hard to watch.......2005-02-09

I'm a high school AP English teacher, and I bought both the Peter Wood and Sidney Lumet versions of Long Day's Journey into Night, and while Lumet's version isn't totally satisfying, I find it far superior to Wood's version. I'm amazed, in fact, that anyone would recommend this version. Olivier is very good as James Tyrone, but the other actors give weak performances, and the camerawork lacks any creativity. Katharine Hepburn and Jason Robards are excellent in the Lumet version, and there are numerous interesting staging and cinematic choices.

Great Performances, Great Play, Great DVD.......2003-12-01

I am delighted to be able to add this to my DVD collection. This production of the play is easily the finest ever put on film or tape, infinitely superior to that rather tired film with Katherine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson. This was taped in the studio after a famed production of the play was a major success at England's National Theatre.

Olivier's James Tyrone is indelible, the only actor I have ever seen to make the character a real living person rather than a hard-hearted tyrant. Olivier's performance is heart breaking, one of the most beautiful and moving performances I've ever seen. His James Tyrone manages to be achingly human and sad at all times, without ever once sugar-coating the character's less admirable qualities. That the same can be said of Constance Cummings as Mary Tyrone, and Denis Quilley and Ronald Pickup as Jamie and Edmund is a tribute to an overall magnificent cast.

A more than worthy addition to anyone's DVD library, and vital viewing for anyone interested in watching a great performance of a great play.

All in all, this is a great feast of acting for those willing to sit still and watch it with the attention it deserves. It doesn't get better than this.

Long Days Journey Review.......2003-10-31

Long Days Journey Into Night was the classic struggle about man battling with his fate. I thought the movie was alright, but not really my kind of flick. For drama lovers it would probably be a little better. It lacked any real action or entertainment from my point of view, but kept my interest somewhat. The acting was very good, however the plot was very depressing and sad, it's not a very uplifting movie whatsoever.

An uninteresting but educational masterpiece.......2003-10-31

After viewing this movie, I thought that it was exactly like any other movie I've viewed in school, boring. While many critics may argue that this was a great piece of art by O'neill, I found it to be three hours of mediocre drama. This is not to say that this film didn't have its interesting parts though. I thought the actors did a wonderful job depicting the lives of the family members and i felt as though this really added to the quality of the movie. Overall I give this movie 3 stars because It was rather boring but it did have its high spots.

Average customer rating:

Great theatre-play!
Hideous
Great Work of Art
Lemmon aid
Perhaps the Penultimate

Long Day's Journey Into Night
Starring: Bethel Leslie , Kevin Spacey , Peter Gallagher , Jodie Lynne McClintock , and Jack Lemmon
Director: Jonathan Miller
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

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Similar Items:

Long Day's Journey Into Night
Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (Broadway Theatre Archive)
American Experience - Eugene O'Neill: A Documentary Film
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Long Day's Journey Into Night

ASIN: B0007XG1EY
Release Date: 2005-05-10

Description

Academy Award©-winning star power lights up this passionate production of Eugene O'Neill's timeless American classic! In the height of a sweltering summer, the Tyrone family is about to explode with simmering tensions and suppressed truths that can no longer be held back. Wealthy but unsatisfied former actor James (Jack Lemmon) lives with his morphine-addict wife, Mary (Bethel Leslie, In Cold Blood), and their two tormented sons, Jamie (Kevin Spacey, The Usual Suspects) and Edmund (Peter Gallagher, TV's The O.C.). As nightfall approaches, truth and madness fight for control over a family tearing itself apart. A landmark production from theater legend Jonathan Miller, this searing drama is a bold, electrifying powerhouse you'll never forget!

Customer Reviews:

Great theatre-play!.......2007-06-28

The actors are very very good. The plot is interesting. I am glad that I have watched it.

Hideous.......2006-09-06

This version is nothing - absolutely nothing - on the Katharine Hepburn version. See that one instead.

Great Work of Art.......2005-10-26

I have been a fan of the stage for several decades and have seached high and low for a copy of this production. I saw it on ebay several times for hundreds of dollars but finally it has been made available to all. If you are a lover of great stage performances than this dvd is for you. It has been missing from my collection far to long. You see the late great Jack Lemmon at his best (on stage) and a young raw Kevin Spacey (he even has hair) working togther on stage. Then add Peter Gallagher and Bethel Leslie and you have some of the great stage performers of our time. I missed this one live - don't know how - but still kicking myself. Great to see it on DVD for generations to enjoy.

Lemmon aid.......2005-09-25

Jack Lemmon is brilliant in this 1987 television production of Eugene O'Neill's 1940 play as the patriarch of a severely dysfunctional family, James Tyrone--a former actor and now an emvbittered man in his 60s. His wife, Mary, played quite well by Bethel Leslie, is a morphine addict. His older son, Edmund, is consumptive but says he has "a bad cold". And his younger son, Jamie, is hard bitten, cynical--a chip off the old block. Jamie's bitterness echoes his father's in another way--he's a failed actor.

Edmund is played by Peter Gallagher. It's a little off-putting to connect a man with consumption to an actor with such a strapping frame. In spite of that, Gallagher does do a good job. The only somewhat false note, unfortunately, is supplied by Kevin Spacey as Jamie who turns in a somewhat one-dimensional performance. His cynicism comes through, but he doesn't shake that. Even when his lines indicate he's softened a little, trying to convey that he does in fact have some sympathy for his brother or his father, it still sounds aggressive. This was near the start of his professional acting career, so perhaps it's understandable.

The production itself, however, is first-rate. The director, Jonathan Miller, startled audiences by staging the play in such a way that there is often overlapping dialogue. This happens most often when two members of the family are arguing with each other, which is decidedly realistic. In an extremely intriguing one-hour audio interview that comes as a bonus on this DVD, Miller talks about this technique of overlapping dialogue. He is a brilliant man--both a medical doctor and a stage/opera director--and listening to him is a real pleasure.

There is also a one-hour audio interview with Kevin Spacey. Nowhere near as captivating as the interview with Miller, it is still of interest, particularly when Spacey recounts several anecdotes about his relationship with Jack Lemmon, who he considers a mentor.

The overlapping dialogue technique startled not only the audience, but also critics, many of whom lambasted Miller for this. After all, the playwright is O'Neill, an American institution. But personally, I think Miller did a terrific job. It's somewhat difficult to listen to endless dialogue from a dysfunctional family; this technique of having the characters talk over each other is exactly what dysfunctional family members would do in real life and it juices up the proceedings, makes the audience sit up and pay attention. I think it's perfect.

In fact, when you see and hear Long Day's Journey for the first time and you realize it was written in 1940, you realize just how far ahead of his time O'Neill really was. The substantial spate of plays and films that have been staged, produced, and released since that time with a dysfunctional family as the theme have testified to exactly how prescient and attuned the playwright was to the real core of American life--life as it's lived day to day in the home.

This is a brilliant play with a marvelous production. Lemmon is phenomenal; Leslie is great. Gallagher is very good and Spacey gives it a good try. Were it not for the somewhat weaker elements, this would be a five-star rating.

Still highly recommended.

Perhaps the Penultimate .......2005-06-18

This is a wonderful interpretation of O'Neill's transcendental autobiographical work. The cast is fine, but a less "performed" example of Long Day's Journey into Night does exist. The 1962 film by Sidney Lumet actually succeeds more as a drama and as a glimpse into a tortured reality. It is hard to explain. It's like seeing Shakespeare acted out instead of embraced and performed. This newer cast acts the story. The Lumet cast lives the story. They breathe it. They are not actors cast in a show. They are the O'Neill family. Even the filming itself becomes an active part of the Lumet experience. Is buying this version a mistake? Absolutely not. I would just simply recommend taking a look at the Lumet version before deciding.

Average customer rating:

Long Night's Journey Into Day
Starring: Mary Burton (III) , Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela , Tony Weaver , Robert McBride (II) , and Mongezi Manqina
Director: Frances Reid (II) , and Deborah Hoffmann
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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