Boring

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Bette Davis is famous for saying, "Fasten your safety belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride." More appropriate here is, "Put on your hip boots, you're going to have to wade through a lot of muck", Particularly if you watch the original 173 minute version shown on TCM.There are lots of reasons this film was such a financial disaster for RKO. For one thing, the matte artwork for many exterior shots is about the most fake looking I have ever seen in any film...and 1947 was not exactly the Stone Age. And, at least in parts, some of Rosiland Russell's acting seems to belong back in silent films (take for example her movement and looks when she sees an inopportune tryst of her mother's very early in the film).To be honest, there is only one performance here that I found had quality -- that of Raymond Massey. I'd have to say brilliant, in fact.Michael Redgrave is preposterous in this film. I know he became a great actor...it must have been after this film! Leo Genn was quite good.Katina Paxinou was a Greek actress that didn't translate well on the American scene. She is not tolerable in this film, Henry Hull always does nicely, and Kirk Douglas has a small part here.I know that the original play that this film is based upon was written by Eugene O'Neill. And I don't know much about O'Neill. But if this film is representative of O'Neill, then PU. As esteemed critic Bosley Crowther wrote at the time, the film is "a static and tiresome show", and that's putting it politely. This is probably the hammiest movie I have ever seen. If they showed this film in a movie theater today, the audience would be laughing out loud. Give me Lillian Hellman any day!

Rosalind Russell's Lavinia is engaged in a vicious war with her mother (Katina Paxinou) over the death of her heroic father (Raymond Massey) in this adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra from RKO studios. The drama intensifies when a brother, played by Michael Redgrave, returns from battle in the Civil War. He is soon drawn into simmering family entanglements. With his sister, he commits murder against their mother's lover to avenge the father's death. The film offers an eclectic array of acting styles, though Dudley Nichols' direction seems to skillfully weave all the elements together. Kirk Douglas gives a standout performance in a supporting role, but it's the ambitious interpretation of family justice and the explosive recriminations that characters continually experience which render it a riveting story, a riveting film– and an undeniable masterpiece.

A proud ante-bellum family goes all 'Medea' on each other, and tears themselves to pieces for two and a half hours in this updating of the Orestia. It really pounds home how timeless the Greek classic is, in a way that seeing actors in togas, expounding on their anger, could never accomplish. The Little Foxes covers similar ground as a showcase for Bette Davis. And Peyton Place discloses the sinister secrets rotting the soul of an outwardly pleasant small town. But MbE is the most startling of them all, because it's so unsung. I put it on unsuspecting, and it was so engrossing and vengeful I couldn't stop watching until I saw who triumphed and who was punished. Only the last third falters a bit, as the rather explicit Freudian psychology of the first half doesn't have anywhere left to go.I don't understand viewer's qualms about 'dated acting.' It's 1947, what do they expect? I cut old movies a lot of slack for things like that as they also provide a window into a different moment in the culture. Everyone is up to their role, but Redgrave is above average. This is not a filmed play as some have indicated. There is modest camera work; this is clearly not some stage production that they just filmed. Just don't expect aggressive, needlessly showy visuals. The story is the thing here. This is where Tennessee Williams might have gone without resorting to excesses like cannibalism. It's a revelation that Rosalind Russell wasn't typecast, once upon a time. Not something I'd watch over and over, but wow, exhilarating, and relatively fast-moving for drama.

Eugene O'Neil or not, this 1947 film is pure junk.Rosalind Russell was favored to win the Oscar for playing the horrid Lavinia. The picture was so lousy, that's what did her in.A story of love and continuous death, people literally die off like flies in this one, is depressing. The cinematography may also be described this way.Former Oscar winner, Katina Paxinou overacts. She literally screams her part. Michael Redgrave, who was also Oscar nominated here, is really vacuous here.Rosalind Russell was a superior actress who was given an inferior script. Had I been her, I would have headed to the exits right after this film was made.A pure a-one stinker.