Long Day's Journey into Night

"After such an experience, I don't see how one can niggle over whether it's 'cinema' or merely 'filmed theatre.' Whatever it is, it's great ... Katherine Hepburn has surpassed herself - the most beautiful comedienne of the thirties and forties has become our greatest tragedienne; seeing her transitions in Journey, the way she can look eighteen or eighty at will, experiencing the magic in the art of acting, one can understand why the appellation 'the divine' has sometimes been awarded to certain actresses." – Pauline Kael

The definitive Eugene O'Neill on film, Lumet's flawless adaptation of the author's autobiographical, Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece stars Ralph Richardson as the embittered stage actor James Tyrone, husband to a recovering (or relapsing?) morphine addict (Oscar-nominee Katherine Hepburn) and father to an alcoholic fellow actor (Jason Robards, Jr., recreating his role from the original Broadway production) and a tubercular merchant seaman (Dean Stockwell). Shot entirely in sequence at New York's Chelsea Studios following a lengthy rehearsal period with the cast, Long Day's Journey swept the acting prizes of the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, winning a collective Best Actor trophy for Richardson, Robards, and Stockwell, and Best Actress for Hepburn.

For a half-a-century he made some of your favorite American movies. For Sidney Lumet, the work was the thing and his craft, self-effacing. Though his films earned a combined total of 46 Oscar nominations, it was not until he received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar - for his "brilliant service to screenwriters, performers, and the art of the motion picture" six years before his death in 2005 that the coveted statuette eluded him. With the revealing self-portrait, By Sidney Lumet, and seven of his most beloved films, CGAC pays long overdue tribute to an American master and his classics.

Check out the rest of our At Long Last Lumet program!