Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1962

The Contenders:

Lee Remick: Days of Wine and Roses
Katharine Hepburn: Long Day’s Journey into Night
Anne Bancroft: The Miracle Worker (winner)
Geraldine Page: Sweet Bird of Youth
Bette Davis: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

You Think Your Family Has Problems...

Film: Long Day’s Journey into Night
Format: Movies! Channel on rockin’ flatscreen.

When I can, I like to knock longer movies off the list of films I still have to watch. I recorded Long Day’s Journey into Night a couple of weeks ago, and it’s just shy of being one of the 10 longest I had left. Today I had the chance to knock it out and figured it was a good opportunity to knock out something that hits close to three hours. In the interest of full disclosure, this is a film that I’ve tried to get through before and didn’t get much past the first half hour. Long Day’s Journey into Night is not something that one enters into lightly.

This film is the cinematic version of Eugene O’Neill’s play of the same name. This is soon evident. With the exception of a couple of early scenes that take place outside or in something like a shed, the entire story takes place within a couple of rooms of a large house. There are only five characters here: four family members and a cook (Jeanne Barr), who is only really in one significant scene. It’s the family we’re concerned with, and each one could easily be the main character of another story.