Sergeant_Tibbs Sidney Lumet cites his adaptation of Long Day's Journey Into Night as his proudest and most satisfying piece of work. It's easy to see why. This account of a single day in the life of a dysfunctional family offers him the same scale and subdued creativity as 12 Angry Men with half the characters and twice the runtime. It boasts powerhouse performances from titans of cinema - Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robarbs and Dean Stockwell deliver all-time worthy work. It's dense in dialogue and character, resulting in a whirlwind 3 hours that holds you in every moment. It's drenched in compelling drama, exploring identifiable regrets, vices, resentment and paranoia. It may be an ugly side to people, but it's truthful. Although it's been criticized for being too stagey, and although the acting may be theatrical, Lumet's stark poetic photography does half the emoting and compliments the character work perfectly. This is how it should be done.9/10

connch Eugene O'Neils "Long Days Journey Into Night" can be seen as the blueprint from which later family character dramas were drawn. Not the first and arguably not the best, it nonetheless is a remarkable play in the way it dramatizes the emotions that tear a family apart and keep them together.After a clunky opening meant to draw attention away from the play's inherent staginess and a too forced and unrealistic scene between Jason Robards (as Jamie) and Ralph Richardson (as James Tyrone), "Long Days Journey Into Night" soon turns into something stronger and it is all due to Katherine Hepburn.Whatever preconceptions one has of Hepburn's abilities, her sometimes high toned, even snobby attitudes, occasional lapses in credibility (see "Dragon Seed" or "Song of Love" or "Sea of Grass), her knockout performance here is staggering. This is the perhaps the last time Hepburn would truly act in one of her films. Four years would pass before she'd be seen in a movie again and it would be in the reprehensible "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner". After that movie and the following year's performance in "The Lion in Winter", Hepburn passed from actress into legendary woman status that effectively wiped away her ability to really perform.In "Long Days Journey…" Hepburn is amazing. The role of Mary is one that could easily pull down an entire production if not acted right. Its scenery chewing potential is great and Hepburn walks a high wire act all the way through. You hold your breath waiting for her performance to falter and strike a false note, to see the acting going on. There's no sentimentality or vanity about the performance: it's harsh, upsetting and terrifying. And exhilarating. Performances like these are what make people want to act in the first place. It is truly thrilling to see a performance of this energy and concentration. A consummate pro giving it their all in top form. The only performance that I can think of that equals it is Vivien Leigh's in "A Streetcar Named Desire".As for the movie itself, it's really a filmed play slightly opened up. The acting by the rest of cast is excellent from Richardson to Robards to Stockwell down to Jeanne Barr as the cook. They all seem to willingly recede when Hepburn is on.

Dave from Ottawa A day in the life of Eugene O'Neill's spectacularly dysfunctional family would be an endurance test for any normal person. The morphine-addict mother, alcoholic older brother and skinflint father gather around the youngest son as he is about to leave for a sanitarium for consumption. They rationalize, get nostalgic about earlier times and think wistfully (not to mention self-deludingly) of the lives they might have led, while dissecting each others' faults as only family members can. The characters (and by now the audience) begin to dread the coming of night as the brother's drinking and the mother's drug use threaten to turn them by turns nasty and insane. Since the script is the star, the direction consists mostly of camera movement into and across and amongst the various pairings and groupings of the principles, which would seem a sound choice. The stage-bound claustrophobia which so commonly results in filmings of great plays is a virtue here, as the family members literally cannot get away from one another. They are held together by blood and co-dependency. Little actually happens and the action is kept to a minimum, but the dramatic fireworks keep things moving along.

dataconflossmoor This movie is a compelling illustration of the dark human emotions that afflicted famous author, Eugene O'Neal!! "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is an account of the somber trenches that reflects Eugene O'Neal's life when he was growing up!! Eugene O'Neal writes this wonderful work of art, and "Long Day's Journey Into Night" became the recipient of a Tony award!! This dramatic query of Eugene O'Neal's life evokes a bevy of stellar accomplishments which became an auspicious mark of theatrical excellence!! This intellectually spellbinding stage play was later made into a major motion picture!! Famous director, Sydney Lumet, (Most famous for "Network") directs this masterpiece, and convincingly asserts an intentionally dreary aura of sadness and miserly despondence which author, Eugene O'Neal, articulated with such a succinct accountability!! The acting is uncompromising, basically second to none: This movie stars; Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell!! All of the characters in this movie have been victimized by one form of abuse after the next!! The father, being an Irish immigrant in the late 1800's, grew up his whole life having been labeled a non-refined American.... Regardless of money, the Tyrones were categorized as shanty Irish!! The older brother, (Jason Robards) was a disgruntled drunk who drummed up all kinds of excuses for his resounding failure as an adult!! The Mother (Katherine Hepburn) was a drug addict, her love for her family was ossified and obtuse by the demeanor with which it was expedited... Her family's problems were always seen through rose colored glasses!! The youngest son, (aka) Eugene O'Neal, (Played by Dean Stockwell) was the misunderstood underling who became plagued with consumption... The intensity of emotions in this movie were incredible... The entire family was keenly aware of all of their adversities which were dragging them down (i.e. alcohol, penuriousness, sleeping pills and morphine, and consumption) and yet, they also knew that they were not strong enough to overcome them... The psychological perspectives that the Tyrone family got relegated to were accurately portrayed in terms of the realistic cynicism which inevitably ensued with their lives!! If the situation changes, it will only change for the worse!! The pitfall of human despair prevailed as an ugly adversary that decimated virtually every one of the Tyrones.... For Eugene O'Neal, the petty consolation prize for having such a dark and ugly citadel of unhappiness for a home life, was that he became a marvelous writer... The Tyrone family's attitudes and feelings were desperately real, they mirrored the sorry end result which was caused by the unfortunate decisions that all of these four people made!! These decisions gridlocked each and every one of them, and manufactured a genre of arctic desolation which centralized their aggregate misery right down to the core of a dreadfully genuine ideological doom!! These feelings manifested a crystal clear conceptualization of hopelessness that the Tyrone family was perennially burdened with!! I thought "Long Day's Journey Into Night" was one of the best movies I have ever seen.. The acting, the directing, and the writing, were all by the best in the business... Cerebral torment is not always pleasant to witness, but, the authenticity of such a fate is empathetically indulged with a pejorative passion in this film!! The motif of rivalry and bitterness in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is depressing with a capital D, then again, that was the movie's intention... Having explained that, it is extremely safe to say that "Long Days Journey Into Night" is a film which is; AN ABSOLUTELY EXCELLENT ONE!!!!