MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 550, 6 January 1950, Page 8

MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA

(RKO-Radio) > UGENE O’NEILL’s play Mourning Becomes Electra was first produced on Broadway in 1931, the performance lasting for six hours. The tragedy is based on the Greek trilogy Oresteia and revolves around the hates, jealousies, and incestuous thoughts of the members of a New England family living at the time of the American Civil War. Dudley Nichols (who also made The Long Voyage Home) adapted and directed the film version, which originally lasted three hours, but has been cut down in the local version to just under two hours. It is two hours of almost unrelieved gloom, yet I left it with what amounted to a feeling of elation at returning to normal life-evidence that some sort of catharsis had taken place, But I was irritated and dissatisfied too -irritated at the dialogue’s Freudian veneer (the guil tand Oedipus complexes were too obviously dwelt upon) and dissatisfied because at some of the most tragic moments the audience began to laugh. What was the explanation of this failure to connect? Why was our sense of the ridiculous aroused? Was it a weakness of the play or of the film adaptation? Whatever the reasons this costly production, so artistically outstanding in many ways, somehow missed fire for me, The severe black and ‘white Photography and starkly beautiful sets certainly helped to create a pseudo-classic mood, and the performances of Katina Paxinou (as Christine) and Michael Redgrave (as Orin) undoubtedly showed great imaginative interpretation. Yet there is a static quality about the production which, when added to its excessive length and sombreness, must slow dowh anyone’s appreciation of it. Nevertheless it is a film which everyone interested in the modern drama should see, if only to study the development and interpretation of what is after all one of the most ambitious themes attempted by America’s greatest playwright.