From its opening moments—with Katharine Hepburn standing on a front porch as if it were a stage—to its final shot—which pulls back from its four players, only darkness around them, to suggest the interior of a theater—Long Day’s Journey Into Night does little to disguise the fact that it’s based on the Eugene O’Neill play. And so the focus (as is often the case in films directed by Sidney Lumet) is on the performances, as we spend one long day and night with the bitterly dysfunctional Tyrone family. Most captivating are Dean Stockwell and Jason Robards as the two adult sons, each struggling in their own way with a legacy of regret, addiction, and mental illness. Robards subtly plays to the camera with that great, droopy face, while Stockwell—capably channeling none less than James Dean—delivers O’Neill’s poetry with a natural, wounded conviction. Hepburn and Ralph Richardson calibrate their performances more for the stage, though she does have two quieter moments—both involving memories from her youth—that are so elegantly wistful that concerns about the movie’s form entirely melt away.
(8/1/2024)