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.

Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), based on a famous play by Eugene O'Neill, was Sidney Lumet's first hit after the enormous success of his debut feature 12 Angry Men (1957). It is a Bergmanian chamber drama where nothing specific happens but, on the other hand, everything does. Lumet himself liked the film a lot and I myself consider it as his finest achievement. He was to develop his self-conscious aesthetic style even further in his subsequent films and the thematics of anxiety culminated in his Cold War thriller Fail-Safe (1964). This film is a journey from ostensible happiness to honest grief and, during the journey, secrets and emotions are revealed; and discussed.As said, nothing particularly extraordinary takes place in the film and it only includes a few characters; happens at one milieu and in one day. A deterministic drama, so to speak, which bears a striking resemblance with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), to only name a few. At its heart, Long Day's Journey Into Night is a story about people who are dissatisfied with their lives and, therefore, are unable to accept the true nature of their light being. Through expressionistic lighting, fast-paced editing and great cinematography, Lumet reflects the psychological depth of the situations; and the anxiety of the characters. Together with his standard cinematographer Boris Kaufman, he delimits the latitude of his characters narrower and narrower; inevitably making them prisoners of the state.The film breaks down the illusion of the idyllic bourgeois happiness and, furthermore, it deals with loneliness, loveless love, agony and the vacancy of modern life. It is a very stylistic film indeed and the construction of the state is, in fact, a combination of long shots with dynamic movement of the camera and static close-ups with rapid editing. What is more, the aesthetics is rhythmed by the distressing sound of the fog horn; and by the wiping light of the lighthouse. In the end, as the light severely sweeps around the physic state; the walls around the characters begin to disappear; slowly into nonexistence.

What a thrill to see the most famous Eugene O'Neill work on Showtime! One of the most impressive out of four awesome performances is one that may ordinarily appear to be outshone, and that is Dean Stockwell's performance.Edmund is often depicted as the "perfect" family member -- Mama's baby, Papa's pet. And yet Mr. Stockwell brings not just his angelic physical appearance, but also his strong sense of the tragic turning point his very existence represents within his family.Thank you, Mr. Stockwell, for bringing such depth and humanity to your role as Jason Robard's younger brother.

In her long distinguished career, some of Katharine Hepburn's performances were mannered, while others were over-praised because of her near-mythic status. However, her Mary Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey into Night" was decidedly neither. Director Sidney Lumet crafted a meticulous filming of the Eugene O'Neill play without distracting from either the words or players with self conscious touches. But, the master director managed to keep his camera flawlessly positioned to capture the genius on display and maintain audience involvement. Boris Kaufman's low-key black-and-white cinematography was constrained by the largely one-set indoor stage, but managed to utilize light and shadow for timeless images of familial disintegration.The direction, cinematography, music, and editing all remain unobtrusive, however, so the incomparable work of a quartet of exceptional actors stays in focus. Dean Stockwell and Jason Robards play Jamie and Edmund Tyrone, the troubled sons of James Tyrone, an aging miserly actor. Like the two younger actors, Ralph Richardson has arguably done nothing that eclipses his work herein. O'Neill's masterwork is well served for posterity by the cast in this version. However, Katharine Hepburn raises a near-perfect record of a classic play to an even higher level. Hepburn's Mary Tyrone may not only be her finest screen work, but may rank among the greatest performances committed to celluloid. While day matures from morning to noon to night, the four Tyrones engage each other together and separately over issues that have simmered for a lifetime. Meanwhile, the day fades, and Hepburn's Mary descends from the light into the darkness as her grip on sanity ebbs with the sunlight and she retreats into the shadows of the Tyrones' dimly lit parlor.The film is nearly three hours long, but the words are rich, and the players obviously relish the lines. Patient viewers who seek familiarity with O'Neill's play could not find a better venue. Fans of any one of the four major cast members will find the film essential viewing, and those who want to see Katharine Hepburn at her apogee need look no further.