Clevercell Very disappointing...

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

HotToastyRag In Eugene O'Neill's play, Katharine Hepburn plays the fragile, weak matriarch in a highly dysfunctional family. Just as the title implies, the entire story takes place during one day, and just as the title implies, it's an incredibly long day. Ralph Richardson is the pontificating former actor who longs for his glory days, Jason Robards is the hard-drinking older son with contempt for every member of his family, and Dean Stockwell is the youngest son who's ill but has just as much of a temper as his healthier counterpart.While the family awaits the doctor's diagnosis of Dean's persistent cough, they're also watchful of Kate. She's in perpetual denial, refusing to believe her son is sick, refusing to acknowledge her former battle with morphine addiction, and refusing to admit tat she might be succumbing to temptation again. Each actor has long, boring monologues that don't contribute to the plot; each actor has long, emotional outbursts that show the audience a highly trained therapist probably couldn't help them. This is the type of play that people who say, "I don't like plays" refer to.While there are plenty of reasons that could make you feel like you should watch this film—famous actors, famous playwright, famous director—there isn't really any reason to watch it if you're actually looking for an enjoyable evening. Rent The Glass Menagerie instead if you want to see Kate in a dramatic play; it's actually good instead of pretending to be.

richard-1787 As I watched this movie again tonight, I was forced to the conclusion that this is really a second-rate play. ENDLESS speeches that do nothing with the English language. NO sense of dramatic arch. It's really a poor play.And then there are the three lead performances, by Ralph Richardson, Katherine Hepburn, and Jason Robarts. If anyone could turn a second-rate script into what you think is a masterpiece, indeed something not far short of Shakespeare itself, it is these three actors. They take the endless speeches in the last hour of the movie and, wringing everything out of every carefully enunciated word, they turn what is basically not far short of dross into pure acting gold. The endless speeches they deliver become masterpieces of acting. You really have to marvel at what they do with little more than nothing.So this movie is worth watching for the acting. But don't read the play. You'll wonder what you could possibly have seen in it.

zetes It doesn't help much that I watched this acclaimed film version of a Eugene O'Neill play right after suffering through a far more obnoxious filmed play (William Gibson's Two for the Seesaw, made the same year). Frankly, I just don't care for the theater, and these films underline pretty well the reasons why. I look at theater as a bunch of people (or two, in the case of Seesaw) on stage bellowing at each other for however many hours (three, in this film's case) while somehow refraining from falling victim to laryngitis. Long Day's Journey Into Night suffers from a lot of clichés: drug addiction, alcoholism, disappointment in lives, and, God help me, consumption (which I thought was just a disease made up by poets and playwrights, but it turns out it's just tuberculosis; "consumption" does sound cooler). Lumet tries to inject some filmmaking into the picture (as he did wonderfully with the equally stagebound 12 Angry Men a few years earlier), mostly in its beautiful final moments (the cinematography, I must admit, is fine throughout, though I really like '60s black and white), but mostly it's very static and is comprised of people talking steadily for the 180 minutes, give or take about three minutes of silence (the film's best moments). I'll give this a slight pass, however, for the acting, as stagebound as it may be. The acting to which I refer is not just Katharine Hepburn's, though hers was very good, too. Dean Stockwell, in my estimation, gives the film's best performance. Jason Robards and Ralph Richardson round out the cast. I thought they were both a bit overwrought, but not bad.

ptaretha There are many reviews here about this incredible work, and about Eugene Oneill's brilliance. I want only to add to these that this film contains the greatest acting performance in the history of films. Katharine Hepburn moves between intentions, emotions, layers, and states of mind at the speed of thought, with the greatest authenticity, range, and ease that has ever been captured on film. It is a masterpiece within a masterpiece, and shows one virtuoso creating an opportunity for another virtuoso to reach their ultimate expression. It is an unparalleled performance, it has no peers. The entire film is wonderful, with Oneill, Lumet, Richardson, Robards, and lovely Stockwell providing the framework for the best performance ever given by an on screen performer. Watch it.