Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant on all levels
Review: The text of the O'Neill play is the greatest of all his works and potentially the greatest American play of the 20th Century. Turning it into a film took a lot of courage since this is a play of internal struggle and there is very little to "see" in terms of action. This is a series of conversations between family members, all of whom are tortured and who are completely unable to deal with each other's failures and/or shortcomings.
Rightfully, many reviewers have lauded Katherine Hepburn's and Ralph Richardson's performances as the parents of two adult sons. They are masterful performances. And certainly Jason Robards, Jr. established himself as a premier interpreter of O'Neill with his interpretation of Jamie, the older son. I think Dean Stockwell's performance is often underrated. Since the character is less well defined in the text, he had to draw his character from the other characters interactions with him. This is extremely difficult to do and yet he is the focus of the family on that particular Long Day. He is to be commended for providing a strong anchor for the others to pull and push on. When Stockwell as Edmund says "Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people," you truly understand how deeply lost he is in a family of lost souls.
This is a wonderfully moody work, filmed with great care and precision. The music is haunting and performed by a solo piano rather than a full orchestra. The single voice of the piano adds to the emptiness of the family and their inability to face any of their demons with resolve.
Not everyone will enjoy this film. It is sad, depressing, black and white, no great action, and incredibly long, but I recommend it to everyone with an interest in family dynamics, brilliant acting, remarkable writing, and/or creative film-making.
Rating:
Summary: Night is Right
Review: O'Neill's last and greatest play, which was not to be produced during his lifetime because it was so personal, has made a successful transition to film. Mainly a succession of dialogues between different members of the family, like most O'Neill the play is long and often redundant. However, this is excused by the brilliance of the language, the raw emotion, and the depth of characterisation. "Night" is O'Neill forgiving his family and telling them that he loves them. It is intense, unrelenting, and painful. However, at the same time, O'Neill wrote some scenes of comic relief, also. There are speeches of great poetry (e.g., Edmund telling his father about his sea adventures).
Katherine Hepburn is perfect as Mary. Her quirky hand and facial movements define the character. I was a bit disappointed with Ralph Richardson's performance. He is a fine actor, but in this vehicle he is supposed to play an Irishman who worked hard to lose his brogue. But in the film, he speaks with his nasal, English accent. Dean Stockwell is fine as the sickly Edmund who has a complex relationship with his brother, Jamie. Jason Robards, Jr., reprises his off-Broadway triumph in the role of the dissolute, unambitious Jamie, James' eldest son.
This is playwrighting at its finest. The film script sticks close to the original. I admire O'Neill for his forays into different experiments in his plays. But "night" proves that you write best when you write about what you know best.
Rating:
Summary: Masterwork
Review: Wonderful play, perfect cast, superb director equals a perfect film. Katharine Hepburn had a career filled with wonderful performances but this is probably her masterpiece. Mary Tyrone is the hub of this play by O'Neill and as Mary unravels so does the family. Katharine Hepburn's Mary begins as bright and shiny and lovely as a new penny and as she succombs to her addiction she begins to blur -- her hair begins to straggle, her wrist sleeves used to cover the needle tracks begin to come undone just as her mind and the family fabric is beginning to come undone. When Mary/Kate walks down the long hallway with all of the sadness and weariness of her situation etched on her face, you can feel the hopelessness that she feels as you know that she is going to climb those stairs to the blessed oblivion of the morphine. That beautiful, sad, lost woman breaks your heart just as she broke the hearts of her men and they in turn broke her heart. Richardson, Robards, and Stockwell were up to the task of acting at the same level as Kate Hepburn and with Lumet's direction, they made a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful, dramatic performances!
Review: I can't imagine any other actress' performance equating with that of Katherine Hepburn. It was marvelous. The movie captured the sullen mood complete with the symbolic fog that languished in the air. It was appropo to the long dark night that reflected characters' torment. Each character did a fabulous job. For those who enjoy dramatic plays, you won't even notice the 3 hours enhanced with lengthy profound dialogues.
This fascinating dramatic play focuses on the life of an addicted, dysfunctional family that suffers greatly with their demons of the past. Eugene O'Neill's 1940 autobiographical story takes place in one long day and proceeds into the brooding night. It is a courageous account of the tortured soul and his haunted family.
The movie performance and script was very close to the book.
In the book's dedication to his wife, O'Neil writes, "I give you the original script of this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood."
The setting is August 1912, at the summer home where the fog lays heavily, foghorns blow loud contrasting with the chime of bells. The mood is somber just like the symbolic recurring fog that impairs vision and obscures reality. The bells are symbolic of the convent where the main character Mary Tyrone was happiest.
The focus of the family is Mary, 54, wife, mother of two sons, wife of Tyrone. At the beginning, we are left to imagine and second guess what is bothering Mary and later it is clearly defined that she is addicted to morphine. Mary lives in the past, where she was in a convent and had a dream to be a concert pianist.
James Tyrone, 65, an alcoholic known by his family as a miser, and whose real concern was to invest money into property rather then family because of a nagging fear from his childhood days -the threat of the poorhouse. He was considered a handsome stage actor and regrets what he could have been,- a great Shakespearean actor.
Jamie Tyrone - the elder 34 year old son, another alcoholic always labeled a loser by his parents. He has a love-hate relationship with his younger brother Edmund as Jamie's confesses that because of his own hatred of himself, his role was to make his younger brother a failure too.
Edmund Tyrone - 24-year old son is a reader of great literature and an aspiring poet. He has tuberculosis and with concern wonders whether his miser father will send him to a shabby institution. Eugene O'Neill is the real-life character of Edmund.
O'Neill provides readers with more than adequate stage direction; we get a real sense of the way we are to interpret the readings including the shifting moods. This is the proverbial "can't-put-it-down-type book" ....MzRizz
Rating: 
Summary: FIVE stars for the performances, ONE star for DVD quality
Review: I agree with the reviews, the performances are absolutely stunning, especially Katharine Hepburn's, possibly the best of her career if not one of the best ever captured on film.
HOWEVER, this DVD release is atrocious. This is close to a three-hour film and they crammed on to one disc. That wouldn't be so bad had they done a new transfer, but this looks like the same one used for the VHS tape. Cropped for the TV screen like the video release, (this was definitely shot in widescreen, according to imdb.com), it's got the same gritty, low-res quality. You could tape this movie off of TCM or Bravo and get better quality. Rent it, tape it, but hold off on buying this until it's given a proper DVD release (if anyone from the Criterion Collection's listening, please license this movie!)
Rating: 
Summary: The quiet desperation of an American family who focuses on
Review: one another's shortcoming but never takes that long, hard look into the mirror of self-introspection. This adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play is dry and slow moving. It's a slow building sizzle of failed lives and interactions exploding and unraveling between well intentioned family members. I would compare its dynamics to 'Relfections In A Golden Eye' (Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Harris) in its pace and temperament.
Everyone needs to be in analysis. Everyone is love-starved and in need of some attention. Everyone uses the failings of others to avoid the failings of their own lives. So we drown in the drama of people and families, like us, who can't extract themselves from the web of their inability to take control of their lives. We see how ineffectual and pointless we become when we depend upon others to fill in the black holes of our emptiness and sense of helplessness.
One has to be in the mood to watch 'Long Day's Journey Into Night.' It's demanding and draining. Yet I always find it a fascinating and insightful viewing. The tragedy of the 'American Dream' and its incompatibility with real life is probably the lesson here. We fill our heads with false expectations, then insulate ourselves from our innate needs and responsibility for our own lives, and end up an unnatural and pathetic shadow of what we might have been.
I've never seen Olivier's version, so I can't compare one to the other. Each film has those who hail one or the other, sometimes at the expense of the other, as the best version. I'll probably buy it down the road so that I know. I think the film good enough to spend the money on a second version.
Like 'Reflections In A Golden Eye,' 'Long Day's Journey Into Night' remains one of my favorite films. I really appreciate the human drama of dealing with our shortcomings and stifled desires. I highly recommend both films, and hope to see "Reflections' on dvd soon.
Rating:
Summary: Landmark film....medicore presentation from Artisan/Republic
Review: Another strip-down medicore presentation from Artisan....This is a landmark brilliant film of perhaps Eugene O'Neill's great play. The directing by Sidney Lumet and the acting by Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell is nothing less than amazing. This has got to be one of the 3 all-time greatest performaces from the late Ms. Hepburn! Simply one of the most amazing films of the 1960's. This should have been issued on Criteron. We should have gotten a first-rate restoration job with either a good documentary/back story on the making of the film, or a commentary by the two survivors of the film, Dean Stockwell and Sidney Lumet. Instead we get a nearly public-domain quality release. I'm so happy to finally get this important film on DVD...but I'm utterly disappointed at the slap-dash quality one has come to expect from Artisan.
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