Classic Movie Review: Long Day's Journey Into Night

After Sidney Lumet's recent passing, I present a fresh look at one of his early films.

It’s not an easy thing to adapt a stage play for the screen, especially most 20^th century American drama that centers on family conflicts. Dramatists like Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill present intimate portraits of a handful of characters, usually bound by time and place. The drama is designed specifically to play out on a stage where there are far more limitations than in cinema.

Director Sidney Lumet, who recently passed away after a long and distinguished cinematic career, got his start in television presenting teleplays and his early cinematic efforts were often adapted stage plays. His Twelve Angry Men was a film adapted from a teleplay that was later adapted for the stage. Of course the film was almost perfectly tailored to be done on stage, although he made it cinematic.

His 1962 adaptation of O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night feels much more constrained by the conventions of theater and a bit hamstrung by what appears to be an attempt to take the drama off the ‘stage’ and into the camera.