This is a powerful film that's making its long-awaited DVD debut and what do we get -- a scratchy print scaled down from widescreen to a 4X3 aspect ratio, essentially the same as its VHS presentation. The price is cheap for good reason ...this is a beauty that's been somewhat stripped of its grandeur.
An American Classic Cleanly Filmed, Stunningly Acted
This is likely Katharine Hepburn's greatest screen performance in a career that spanned over six decades. Tackling Eugene O'Neill's morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone must have been daunting at the time, but this 1962 film version of the playwright's autobiographical masterwork is a blazing showcase for not only her formidable talent but her male co-stars as well. Set right after the turn of the last century, it follows a summer day in the life of the Tyrones, as dysfunctional a family as one could possibly imagine. Ex-actor James Tyrone Sr. is the titular head of the family, a miserly alcoholic actor whose sanctimonious attitude has his family unable to cope with their feelings in constructive ways. His wife Mary is a faded beauty defiantly denying both her condition and that of her youngest son Edmund. Edmund has just returned from a few years on the seas but has contracted tuberculosis. Older son Jamie is a failed actor, a wastrel who has become an alcoholic and resentful of his father's stinginess in not being able to send Edmund to a good sanitarium.
The movie is really a series of confrontations and long recollections. As the story progresses, we learn that each of the family members, instead of bonding over Edmund's illness, is gradually retreating into private hellish worlds and that the inability to peacefully cohabitate stems from an inability to move on from events long passed. Even though they are all obviously intelligent people, they refuse to get past their disappointments, and we are left to witness the repercussions of how their choices have affected their relationships and most tragically, how their relationships have informed their choices. What makes spending three hours with this quartet worthwhile is the fact that O'Neill transcends the melodramatic aspects by honing in mercilessly on each one's strengths and frailties. He avoids the talkiness of a stage play by imbuing a sublimely lyrical use of language that captures a profound sense of beauty amid the overwhelming tragedy.
Director Sidney Lumet remains faithful to the text and emphasizes the play's substantial dramatic force by focusing very specifically on the four actors. Hepburn's head-shaking was beginning around this time, and it actually feeds effectively into the character's constant sense of loss and paranoia. She has several great moments, such as Mary's giggly remembrance of her first encounter with James and the demented stupor she displays near the end as she carries her old wedding dress around. A somewhat rigid Ralph Richardson plays James Sr. with appropriate stentorian fervor, though honestly I would have liked to have seen either Fredric March, who originated the role on Broadway, or ironically Spencer Tracy play this role, especially as the play deals heavily with Irish Catholic guilt. Jason Robards has been so inextricably connected with O'Neill in the intervening years that it is no surprise to see him superbly interpret the role of Jamie with alternate flashes of fury and poignancy. As Edmund, Dean Stockwell is a revelation as the O'Neill doppelganger, the emotional core of the play who takes the family's one positive step of forgiving his father and brother for their faults in the climax. Additional credit needs to be given to cinematographer Boris Kaufman whose fluid work here makes the camera an integral part of the experience by lending depth and range to the scenes that could not have been captured onstage. True, it can be an emotionally draining film for the uninitiated, but it is more importantly, a powerful realization of one of the undisputed classics of the American stage.
Devastating and haunting
This is Eugene O'Neil's masterpiece faithfully brought to the screen. Katherine Hepburn as the dope fiend mother (Mary) is simply outstanding - she transcends her role as actress to some other level beyond that: one of those rare moments in movies (Brando at times has done it and Olivier in Shakespearean roles). Ralph Richardson plays the skin flint, pompous husband (James); Jason Robards is the alcoholic son (Jamie); and Dean Stockwell is the son (Edmund) dying of TB. It's stagey, of course, in that fog-enshrouded house by the sea, but to see these people lash out at each other in pain and bitter misunderstanding, and then lick at each other's wounds, is devastating. [The play is semi-autobiographical, and during the writing, O'Neil left off each day in tears and an emotional wreck.] Definitely worth a watch.
Katharine Hepburn, one of the great American actresses, stars in this film adaptation of one of the greatest American plays, Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. Hepburn plays Amanda Wakefield, a faded Southern belle now living in a small urban apartment, where she suffocates her two children--her restless son Tom (a very young Sam Waterston) and her painfully shy daughter Laura (Joanna Miles)--with her incessant mixture of insistent cheer and guilt. After much prodding from Amanda, Tom finally brings home a friend from his workplace, in the hopes that he might strike up a romance with reclusive Laura. The result is one of the sweetest and most heartbreaking scenes ever written. Hepburn's steely will and sudden vulnerability make her ideal for the domineering mother,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Anthony Harvey (II) DVD Release Date: Released the 11 February 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Jason Robards burst onto the Broadway scene in 1956 with his performance in Eugene O'Neill's devastating Iceman Cometh, playing the central role of Hickey, a salesman who comes to a rundown bar on a mission to bring peace to its boozing denizens by lifting their illusions--only to wreak disaster on them and himself. Four years later, director Sidney Lumet (later to direct such classics as Dog Day Afternoon and Network) made this skillful television version of the play, bringing back Robards, along with a sterling collection of character actors (particularly Myron McCormick as a former communist who comes to see his reasonableness as a form of cowardice) and a young Robert Redford (in a strikingly unheroic role). Robards became famous for his roles in many... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Sidney Lumet DVD Release Date: Released the 15 January 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This black-and-white film adaptation of Tennessee Williams's Southern gothic play is perhaps more famous for the rumored off-screen shenanigans of its stars than for its over-the-top repressed sexuality (only Williams could pull off that paradox, and pull it off he does). Supposedly, stars Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor battled for screen time; Hepburn warred very publicly with director Joseph Mankiewicz; and a postaccident Montgomery Clift relied heavily on painkillers and support from friend Taylor during the grueling shoot. Even this, however, cannot top the events of the film itself, revolving around the unseen playboy Sebastian and his mysterious death, which has something to do with young boys, a decadent European vacation, and Taylor in a provocative wet, white bathing... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Elizabeth Taylor - Katharine Hepburn - Montgomery Clift Director(s): Joseph L. Mankiewicz DVD Release Date: Released the 15 August 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Looking for a benchmark in movie acting? Breakthrough performances don't come much more electrifying than Marlon Brando's animalistic turn as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Sweaty, brutish, mumbling, yet with the balanced grace of a prizefighter, Brando storms through the role--a role he had originated in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Stanley and his wife, Stella (as in Brando's oft-mimicked line, "Hey, Stellaaaaaa!"), are the earthy couple in New Orleans's French Quarter whose lives are upended by the arrival of Stella's sister, Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). Blanche, a disturbed, lyrical, faded Southern belle, is immediately drawn into a battle of wills with Stanley, beautifully captured in the differing styles of the two actors.... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vivien Leigh - Marlon Brando Director(s): Elia Kazan DVD Release Date: Released the 18 May 1999 Usually ships in 8 to 10 days
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