Long Day's Journey Into Night

When Eugene O'neill sold his play to the distributors, his condition was to not produce it during his lifetime. And while watching this film, you can only imagine the implications if it was.

Long Day's Journey into Night(1962) tells the story of a dysfunctional family. A family where mother is morphine addict and depressive, father is or rather once was a famous actor, older brother who tried to unsuccessfully follow the steps of his father and younger brother who is broke and is diagnosed with Consumption. Movie follows a day into their lives. But what a day it is !! There is a lot of bickering about many things of their life and it does bring a lot of skeletons out of the closet - Both  the sons and mother think that their father is too stingy, they blame a lot of problems in their lives arose because of his unwillingness to spend like they would have controlled their mother's illness from going worse or younger son does not want to go to State Sanitarium just because it is cheap. Father thinks that the Younger son is too morbid for his own good and older son is loafer, drunken failure. Their mother thinks that the birth of second son is the reason of her deteriorating health and addiction and blames their father for her loneliness which arose from the house they are living in which she hates. Even two sons don't look straight into each others eyes.

Adaptation from O'neill's Pulitzer Prize winning play is quite apparent when you are watching actors play their parts. Whole setup is suitable for a play. Scenes are much longer than normal, it even has many lengthy monologues like you would have in a play. Most of the scenes have just a couple of characters. There are no special effects, no cut shots, no background music. Whole focus is on characters, their acting and dialogues. Well, considering Sidney Lumet directed it, it should not come as a surprise but this film has much more feel of a Play more than any of his other films. But then there comes the extra responsibility of fitting it to the screen, confining the whole action in one set and achieving the required momentum for the film with just the help of characters. It puts a lot more responsibility on actors and directors and under the able leadership of Sidney Lumet, they make it happen. Katherine Hepburn, as a morphine addict mother is just one shining example of it. She is AMAZING in it. She has a lot of  - transformations as you can say when she comes and goes into her lucid moments. She  is very bitter when she is out of her own but in the very next moment, she will apologize profusely for being so. And she does this with amazing clarity of character and unparallelled facial expressions. It's a treat to watch her play this character. Ralph Richardson does fine job himself as a  patriarch of the family. His thick accent gives much more credibility to the old theater actor he is playing.

It is a kind of hard film to watch as whole script is sharp ups and downs of spirits and moods of all these volatile characters. This nature also makes it almost impossible for them to help each other out even if they want to. Every action starts with a good intention, but before it can reach its desired effect, their bitterness takes over. Sidney Lumet is clearly visible in many aspects of a film. Very much like 12 Angry Men(1957), whole movie takes place at a single location, their House. Very much like Fail-Safe(1964) and The Hill(1965), there is no background music and no special effects the whole time and whole focus is on characters. However, it does have a very slow pacing which can bore someone and whole feel of the movie does not help much either. But if you can sit through that, it definitely is an engaging story of how much explosive a day can be.

Rating(out of 5):

Profile of a Director

Sidney Lumet: Master of Cinema

“While the goal of all movies is to entertain,” Mr. Lumet once wrote, “the kind of film in which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience and stimulates thought”. I have said before in one of my posts about how I stumbled upon the greatness of this amazing director. Though I did not know some of his movies when I saw them to be his, all his movies, knowingly or unknowingly to be his work, have always kept me riveted. I am devoting this third post in profile of a director series to Sidney Lumet; known to bring out the best from his actors as well as for his great sense of storytelling and technical aspects of film making and also one of my favorite directors. Sidney Lumet is one of the greatest American directors. But what is most notable about him is he made movies on so wide range of subjects that it is almost impossible to categorize him.

Lumet was one of the most prolific directors directing 72 films over the course of 50 long years of his career. Many of these films were critical success - commercially some were successful where some of then were downright disaster as well. However they always were recognized for fine performances, which can be evident by the fact that he directed 17 different actors to the Oscar Nominated performances - 4 of them ended up winning. He himself was nominated 5 times, never won though. Probably this just added another aura to his legacy though like Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick.

After using two different approaches for first two directors, since he was such a prolific director, today I am going to try and come up with his 10 best films in my opinion.

1. 12 Angry Men(1957): This is one of my Top 10 of all time Films. This was Lumet’s First feature film and, not just by me but by many others as well, considered to be his best film. This court-room drama is pretty much set in one room - the room where juries retire to make their final decision. However, this absorbing movie reaches far beyond the confinement of its jury room setting. Henry Fonda, playing Juror #8, engraves that term 'Beyond a Reasonable Doubt' is not just legal jargon but has great importance and him producing same knife that was used to kill by verdict remains to be one of the most amazing moments of my cinematic life.

2. The Hill(1965): I have said pretty much everything I wanted to say Here.

3. Dog Day Afternoon(1975): What I find most interesting about this film is, though it is based on a True Story, just after half an hour into the movie, I was pretty convinced that when Police arrive outside, Pacino and Cazale were done for - this is the end of it. And I was curious because there was still more than hour of film left. The way he built up story from that point was simply remarkable. Getting crowd involved by provoking them against the recent Police atrocities was the masterstroke.

4. Network(1976): Lumet's most successful film, Oscar wise. It is a satire on the News business which even after 35 years holds as true as it was at the time of release. Faye Dunaway does great job as a producer who is ready to sell anything that people will buy and so does William Holden as a responsible Executive who is trying to make some sense out of the whole mess. But the real show-stealer off course is Peter Finch as a rambling broadcaster. It questions the tendency of selling anything as an Entertainment to increase TRP's of Network.

5. Before The Devil Knows You Are Dead(2007): Last film Lumet made before his death in 2011. One of the reviews I read sums up the movie really well. "The movie's title comes from the Irish toast, 'May you be in Heaven half an hour Before the Devil knows you're dead.' Unfortunately, everyone in the film is running about 35 minutes late". Its story of two brothers who decide to rob their parents shop to get themselves out of the debts. Robbery not only goes wrong horribly but in the end, it completely destroyes the whole family.

6. Prince of the City(1981): Second movie in his corruption trilogy which also included Serpico (1973) and Q&A(1990). It's a real life story of a Narc detective Robert Leuci who agrees to cop with feds about the department malpractices. He agrees on the term that he will not have to rat out his friends but as he gets deeper and deeper into it, all he can do is watch the whole world around him turn against him. This film is considered authentic enough that it is used in Drugs Enforcement Administration Training Program.

7. The Verdict(1982): Paul Newman plays a miserable lawyer who is fighting a medical malpractice case. After meeting the victim in hospital, he gets involved and turns down the settlement offer from Hospital without Family's consent. Paul Newman does a fantastic job of showing his inner conflict - initially chasing ambulances to get a case and then deciding whether he is doing it for the victim or for himself.

8. Serpico(1973): First of his Corruption Trilogy I talked about earlier. Again, Its a real life story of Frank Serpico, a cop who helped to expose the biggest corruption scandal in history of NYPD and his undeterred resolve to never take a bribe. What is amazing to see here is how much intimidation Al Pacino's character has to face from just his fellow policemen. "Everyone is eating. Why can't you just like them?" seems to be the catch line.

9. A Long Day’s Journey Into Night(1962): Based on Pulitzer prize winning play by Eugene O'Neill, it tells the story of a day in life of dysfunctional family where everyone is playing the blame game. Most of Lumet's early films are adaptations from plays. But, in this case, it looks like only change Lumet made from play to movie is he shot them on locations. And Great direction by Lumet and some great acting by all the characters make it interesting. But, it lacks the pace and whole grimm feel of a movie can be a put-off too.

10. Fail-Safe(1964): If not for its too idealistic ending, this film would have made its way up at the top. Maybe the fact it was made in 1964 just after JFK's assassination, JFK's idealism made its impression. Otherwise, till the last 10-15 minutes, it looks really good especially with handling many aspects of impending nuclear war.

Previous Profiles:
Martin Scorsese
Woody Allen

The Hill

                  

When I first started writing this blog, I made myself a promise that I will not write posts where I will just write reviews for a particular film basically because I have a habit of checking any film out before watching it. I never watch any movie unless I have a good reason to watch it. And generally after this, I find it hard to criticize it even though in many cases I really want to throw eggs at it. In most cases, I have kept my promise though some movies are so special that I had to bend this rule for myself. The Sweet Hereafter (1998) was one such movie. Today, after watching The Hill(1965), I am making an exception as well. Both these movies moved me so much that I couldn’t pass the opportunity to write something about them and both these films are so original, so different from any other movie I have seen, that if I write something about them, it can only be a review. But I am taking this opportunity since it is too much for me to pass it on. However, I shall warn anyone reading this that if you have not seen this, there will be spoilers because it is written so tightly that if I leave even a single smaller part, I doubt this will diminish the effectiveness of whole film by many folds. So, proceed at your own risk.

I recently stumbled upon “How Many of Woody Allen's Favorite Films Have You Seen?” written by Brad Brevet. The Hill(1965), making the list in his favorite American Films. I also had many of Sidney Lumet’s other films in my wish-list for quite some time now. So, I decided to watch this along with others as Serpico(1973) and Long Day’s Journey into the Night(1962). Lumet made this film during first of his two most successful artistic periods in his career (Second period being from 1973-1978, where his films including Network(1976) and Dog Day Afternoon(1975), accumulated staggering 31 Oscar nominations in 6 years, getting nominated every year and winning 6 of them).

Adapted from play by Ray Rigsby and R.S. Allen by Rigsby himself, The Hill is about five new prisoners in british disciplinary prison in North Africa and their fight to survive prison and their guards. Sean Connary is in the central character of Joe Roberts, demoted in the army for disobeying the direct order and sent to the prison for beating up his commanding officer. Staff Sergent Williams is Jailer of this prison who believes that his job is to make his prisoners MEN again to be sent back into army. Therefore, He relies on grueling, physical tasks, even though monotonous and pointless, to achieve this. Climbing up and down The 'Hill' made up of Sand and Dirt is most popular of those tasks.  Sergent Wilson is ferocious guard in-charge of these prisoners who enjoys  breaking men down. There is also Sergent Charlie Harris, more humane of the guards, who tries to limit Wilson's atrocities but always ends up failing because Staff Sergent Williams believes in Wilson's methods. There is also a medical officer, who always wants to do the right thing but almost every time has to bend down to Staff Sergent's authority.

However, all the hell breaks loose when Sgt. Wilson goes little too far is his sadistic treatment and one if the prisoners, George Stevens, dies. Staff Sergent Williams is not the one to disown his deputies and he tries to cover it up by pressurizing medical officer yet again to put it down as accidental death. However, Roberts doesn't shut down quietly. He thinks that Wilson killed Stevens and wants Wilson punished for his brutal behavior. Even Harris has had enough and stands behind prisoners to launch formal complaint and medical officer joins in as well when pushed hard enough by both sides. Other cellmates of Roberts, King and McCarthy stand firmly behind Roberts as well in the end.

This is not a typical good guys vs bad guys story. Roberts is not a typical hero and so is Wilson or Williams not a typical villain. Guards believe Roberts to be a Coward because of his disobedience which might have killed him and men under him. He believes that Man can not just follow any and every order given to him like machine but still believes that if there are no rules there will be no army. On the other hand, Williams is trying to break the spirit of all the prisoners because he believes that is the way they can become Men again. One of the prisoners, Jecko King, even though is constantly demeaned for being of different color, is the only one who stands behind Robert since start. However Williams favor-ism drives him crazy in the end. Another Cellmate McCarthy, keeps on fidgeting between for and against Roberts while Bartlett is the first one to jump the ship at the first notion of discomfort.

It is not what happens but How it happens is what makes The Hill a great film to watch. Once the prisoners start fighting against the authorities, it becomes so fast paced that it not give you time to breathe, but at no point it looses its grip. It keeps you compelled till the last moment, which in my opinion is a very realistic ending. All the characters are so well defined that even though some of them have short parts, they play very significant role in developing the story. Film does not have any background score and only place we see in the whole movie is prison in that desert. There are no special effects used in the background to help the story. All the importance is on the characters and story and dialogues. Especially in the last hour, there are lot of dialogues but that does not make film boring or heavy, they rather direct the story beautifully. Also cinematography helps a great deal to set up the feel of movie.

Rating(out of 5):