Awesome Movie

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

... he was just the lit match that set the kindling afire. This is the most messed up family ever. Christine Mannon has always hated her husband Ezra Mannon, a general in the Union army at the time of the Civil War. Outside of casualties the Mannons have nothing to fear from the war since they are safely in New England, far from the actual fighting. But they actually have their own civil war brewing. On top of Christine hating her husband since she married him, begging the question WHY did she marry him, Christine has a much younger lover, sea captain Adam Brant (Leo Genn). Apparently the daughter in the family, Lavinia (Rosalind Russell) fancied Brant at one time herself, so she could hate her mom because she is betraying her father, or she could just be jealous that a woman in late middle age beat her out of a beau.Brant began just toying with Christine because he wanted revenge for something the Mannons did to his mother years ago, although the toying turned to love. Plus it turns out Brant is a Mannon himself, but it is a part of himself that he despises. But Christine knows about the shunned relative angle and is still not dissuaded.Then dad and son return from war, and it turns out that there is something pretty weird about the father/daughter and the mother/son love dynamic going on here. It doesn't look paternal and it does not look platonic. Christine switches Adam's heart pills with poison and kills him so she can be free to be with Brant. However, Lavinia discovers her scheme and the poison pills. Rather than turn her mother over to the authorities for murder, she convinces her brother (Michael Redgrave as reluctant war hero and mama's boy Orin) to mete out their own brand of personal justice rather than send mom to the gallows. The problem is, Lavinia is more like her mother than she would ever admit, Orin is a very unstable partner in her scheme, and Christine does not think that Lavinia's idea of justice is all that it is cracked up to be.Add in Lavinia's rather naïve yet devoted suitor with high moral standards, played by a - believe it or not - sixth billed Kirk Douglas, and you have a recipe for disaster.If this sounds like a Greek tragedy, actually it is. But you know what, I was glued to to the screen taking it all in. I felt like a voyeur invading this family's most personal crazy secrets. It was just like when the brother and sister were on the boat looking down, like voyeurs, into the galley and seeing their mother in the arms of her adulterous lover. The movie grabs your attention and keeps it for 2 1/2 hours.Highly recommended especially for Michael Redgrave and Rosalind Russell who, though she was just shy of 40, did not look too old for the part. Michael Redgrave takes a wild ride of emotions and has you believing every one of them. Oh, and Kirk, run! Run far away from these people! No scrape that Burt Lancaster or the Duke ever got you into was as dangerous as these Mannons!

Academy Award winning screenwriter Dudley Nichols also produced four films and directed three, this was the last time he did either; his previous effort in both capacities also featured Rosalind Russell in the title role, Sister Kenny (1946). For both efforts, the actress received Best Actress Oscar nominations, this being her third of four (unrewarded) nominations for her career. Nichols also wrote the screenplay from the Eugene O'Neill play. In addition to Russell, Michael Redgrave (whose character doesn't appear until the drama's second act, one hour into the movie) received his only Academy recognition, a Best Actor nomination.The story is basically an updated version of the classic Greek tragedy of Agamemnon, the commander who returned from Troy hungry for a renewed life with his spouse only to find that his wife has strayed with a younger man (that could be his own son). She poisons him and then (she and her lover) must suffer the wrath of her own son and daughter, who are then haunted by guilt and their own demons (including near incestuous jealousy) for their vengeful act.In this case, Raymond Massey plays Union General Ezra Mannon who's returned home from the Civil War to his loving daughter Lavinia aka 'Vinnie' (Russell), the titled Electra, with his injured son Orin (Redgrave). Shortly before he's murdered, Ezra learns that wife Christine (Katina Paxinou, looking quite a bit younger and more attractive than she did in her Academy Award winning Best Supporting Actress stint as Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)) is in love with the son of a former Mannon family maid that he'd thrown out of the house for diddling his brother; Leo Genn plays Adam Brant. The drama plays out in three overwrought and overlong acts: The Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted.Also in the cast are Kirk Douglas (in his third film) as Peter Niles, who courts Lavinia, Nancy Coleman as his sister Hazel Niles, who's in love with Orin, Henry Hull as the Mannon's 40 year groundskeeper (that does what he's told) Seth Beckwith, Sara Allgood as a landlady, and Thurston Hall as the family doctor named Blake. Additionally, Elisabeth Risdon, Erskine Sanford, and Jimmy Conlin also appear briefly.

Miscast, stagnant version of something that's heavy going to begin with. Redgrave is good as Orin the haunted son. Rosalind tries but is just the wrong actress for the part, ideally it should have been Katharine Hepburn or Olivia de Havilland. She owed Dudley Nichols a favor for adapting and directing the story of Sister Kenny, a dream project for her and this was his but could only get it made with her participation, she even admitted that she was wrong for it but felt a sense of loyalty and went forward. Katina Paxinou gives an overblown operatic performance in a part that would have fit Garbo perfectly. The play is really too complex for a standard film version, the extended PBS production in the late 70s with Joan Hackett and Roberta Maxwell got it right but that one clocks in at just under five hours.

This is a very interesting Eugene O'Neill story with a great cast of actors who spin a very mysterious and dark side of a very respectable family with plenty of hateful secrets in the hearts of many family members. It takes place in a large New England home before and after the Civil War with Raymond Massey playing the role of (Brig.General, Ezra Mannon) who lives with his wife and son, Michael Redgrave, (Orin Mannon) along with his daughter Rosalind Russell, (Lovinia Mannon) who all do not get along like a normal family and live very morbid lives behind closed doors. The only person who offered a great deal to his hometown was Brig. General, Ezra Mannon who was the local Mayor and was very well respected, as for the rest of the family, you will have to see this film to learn just what all these dark secrets managed to change the peoples lives in this story. Rosalind Russell along with Michael Redgrave put their hearts and soul into their roles and made this a great picture.