Having produced a superb film version of Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962, directed by Sidney Lumet), Ely Landau launched a by subscription series of movies of modernist American plays in the mid-1970s. What is regarded as O'Neill's other masterpiece, The Iceman Cometh was clearly the one most personally important to Landau. He recruited the very able director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) and a very impressive cast, including Fredric March and Robert Ryan in their last screen roles, Lee Marvin in his most demanding one, and a young Jeff Bridges as Parritt, the guilty betrayer of the (wobbly, I think) cause, seeking absolution from Larry Slade (the dying Robert Ryan).

The film is faithful to the play, which is to say claustrophobic. It deals with bar-flies so stuck to Harry Hope's New York waterfront bar and flophouse that they seem to be flies in a fly-trap, not just bar flies. Their joyless drinking is interrupted by the arrival of the flamboyant Hickey who livens things up on visits to New York every year. This time (1912) he is determined to make the bar denizens face their failures and admit that they are indulging in fantasies ("pipe dreams," I assume is an allusion to opium-induced ones: they are counterfeit plans and hopes). After many hours of sputtering talk, the aura of doom gives away to destruction for Hickey and Parrit. In some sense they face The Truth about what they have done. Once they are out of the way and no longer blabbering, everyone else goes back to their drinks (and the bar-tender to his sideline of pimping). The survivors don't strike me as feeling guilty about their failures (as Parritt did). O'Neill seems to be saying they are better off with their illusions. (Larry argues this in opposition to Hickey. Hickey is an advocate of facing truths however intolerable they are. It also seems that Larry ends up completely sober, stripped of his own illusions and rationalizations and seems to be a stand-in for O'Neill.)

I have not seen the other filmed version with Jason Robards as Hickey and Robert Redford as Parritt (made for television in 1960, directed by Lumet; it pruned characters and ran a mere three hours). Robards was a very experienced O'Neill performer, and the 1956 revival of The Iceman Cometh did much to revive interest in O'Neill. Nonetheless, it seems to me that Lee Marvin's played the very long-winded part very well, showing the desperation and contempt for himself driving Hickey to show up the others as lying to themselves. They are such stumble-bums that there isn't a lot of thrill in humiliating them or fooling them into thinking Hickey is a good fellow who gives a flying f____ about them. The film audience (in contrast to the bar one) knows Marvin is capable of killing someone, so there's no "Could he have?" suspense. Similarly, the film audience knows Robert Ryan can be pitiless, even if he is mouthing platitudes about compassion.

The movie runs four hours and seems much longer. Being a play about constriction, it could not be opened up and the actors taken away from the single set. Frankenheimer used few long shots of the whole bar (a proscenium-like framing), lots of close-ups (panning between talking heads and to reaction shots). Frankenheimer was often a very visual film-maker, but there is nothing notable visually in the 239 minutes of filming the play. It is not even particularly darkly shot.

I find both the play and movie The Iceman Cometh excruciatingly slow, schematic, wordy, and overpopulated with characters (the antagonists from the Boer War, especially). I think the American Film Theater productions of Pinter's Homecoming and Albee's A Delicate Balance are more interesting. The movie version of Long Day's Journey seems to me the one instance of masterful film and masterful O'Neill play. I recently saw the movie version of Mourning Becomes Electra, which is very nearly unwatchable despite some compelling performances. The films of Strange Interlude and Desire Under the Elms are laughable. The film of The Long Voyage Home is tedious. Heavily censored though it is, The Hairy Ape has some impact as does Paul Robeson's turn as The Emperor Jones. As Anna Christie, Garbo talked on-screen for the first time in 1930 Marie Dressler got to do her schtick in another waterfront bar. Ah Wilderness! is an atypically light-hearted O'Neill play. I don't remember much about the movie starring Mickey Rooney; I'd like to see the tv version of one of my favorite O'Neill plays, A Touch of the Poet. My conclusion is that O'Neill plays generally make dismal movies, though I wish there was a filmed record of Coleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards in Moon for the Misbegotten.

DVD extras
are mostly about the American Film Theater project, though there are biographical essays on O'Neill and Ryan and a helpful one on the place of the play in O'Neill's corpus of ponderous dramas. I'd have liked to hear what Jeff Bridges has to say about the experience. Most of the rest of the cast and Frankenheimer is dead, though Frankenheimer recorded some very interesting commentary tracks of some of his other movies.


Recommended: No

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age