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re: The whole "uncinematic" thing

Posted by: LegitOnce 08:47 pm EDT 08/15/14
In reply to: The whole "uncinematic" thing - AlanScott 05:21 pm EDT 08/14/14
I would argue that Long Day's Journey Into Night is a bit of a special case because the play (as Lumet clearly realizes) is in large part about a sense of entrapment, of, metaphorically speaking, the inability to escape from the family home. The "action" of the play is immobility: no one even has enough energy to turn off the lights and go to bed. So a film that is true to these qualities is by its nature not going to be "cinematic" is the more superficial sense of the term, "opened up," as this sort of play would traditionally have been done on film. (Compare, for example, William Wyler's adaptation of The Little Foxes that introduces new characters and new situations moving the action far outside the Giddens drawing room.)

The one major misstep I think Mike Nichols takes in his beautiful film of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is the roadhouse sequence: once everybody gets out of the house the tension dissipates somewhat. It's handled brilliantly in a technical sense but it's still a mistake thematically.


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