This may not seem like a very important objection, but remember the brilliant ensemble acting of Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards Jr., Katharine Hepburn and Dean Stockwell in "Long Day's Journey into Night. When Jenna, a single mom and author, plans a trip to the shore with her kids for their summer vacation, she never expects to share a duplex with a carefree surfer. And we do not we cannot quite believe in scenes where the actors operate at different emotional levels. And there is where the movie fails.īecause the story is about three people in the performerce TOGETHER - not separately as accomplished actors in their own right. She holds back, she suggests more than she reveals, and when all three actors are on camera her performance makes the other two look embarrassingly theatrical. Beira-Mar aka Seashore starts out with two young-ish Brazilian guys trying to come up with a plan for their vacation. Miss Neal, who knows the movies, is better suited to the medium. But in the movies the camera does the projecting and all the actor has to do is be there. They talk loudly, their movements are too obvious, they are trying to project. Patricia Neal, as the mother, was cast directly for the movie. Jack Albertson, as the father, and Martin Sheen, as the son, are repeating roles they played on Broadway. Suggest an alternative image to end the film. Part of the problem is with the actors, I think. Later in the same sequence, Mario and Neruda are walking along the seashore together. These openings allow director Ulu Grosbard to recreate effectively the feel of 1946: the cars, the fashions, the life-style.īut the heart of the film still remains in the apartment, and there it doesn't quite work. Gilroy's screenplay follows his original drama pretty much the play is opened up to include a trip to a lakefront cottage by father and son, a night on the town by the whole family, and a Sunday when the mother unaccountably disappears and spends the day having lunch by herself and walking along the seashore. This material was suited to the limitations of the stage the actors, like the characters, were trapped there and couldn't do what they needed to most: bust loose. The three people are caged together in a lower-middle-class flat, and their struggle rages back and forth between the kitchen and the living room with occasional awkward sorties into the bedroom and the john. The typical American marriage, in other words.Īll of these long-standing grievances come into the open when the son returns home and refuses to play the game. We sense that sexual incompatibility is at the bottom of their quarrel, but they have branched out into a variety of battlefields: how to raise their son, money, the church, her family, suspected adultery and mutual persecution complexes. The parents are wonderfully drawn portraits in Gilroy's original play.
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