Mourning Becomes Electra

I mentioned back in November that TCM had a double-feature of Rosalind Russell movies I hadn't seen before. One of them was the movie version of Eugene O'Neill's play Mourning Becomes Electra, which I finally got around to watching.

The movie, like the play, is divided into three parts. The first, called Homecoming, is set in April 1865. In a small town in New England, news is reaching the locals that it looks as though the Civil War is finally about to end, although news of Lee's surrender hasn't been made official. The town is dominated by the Mannons, although all of them are out of town. Patriarch Ezra (Raymond Massey) and son Orin (Michael Redgrave) have been off fighting, while mom Christine (Katina Paxinou) and daughter Lavinia (Rosalind Russell) are both off in New York, although not together. Tending the house is groundskeeper Seth (Henry Hull), who serves as a sort of Greek chorus for this tragedy, giving a bit of backstory to some locals who have never been in the house because the Mannons have a complicated relationship and keep outsiders out as much as possible.

In New York, Lavinia spies on Mom, and follows her to the house of ship's captain Adam Brant (Leo Genn). Worse, Lavinia sees Mom kiss Adam. This pisses Lavinia off, in part because Mom's being unfaithful, but also in part because Lavinia herself has the hots for Adam. Further complicating things is a legend that Adam is actually a cousin to Lavinia: Ezra's brother ran off with the nurse ages ago, leading Ezra to destroy the previous iteration of the Mannon house and build a magnificent new one. Adam would be the now adult child of that relationship. Meanwhile, Lavinia's got another man pursuing her in the form of Peter Niles (Kirk Douglas). He's been in love with Lavinia, and his sister Hazel (Nancy Coleman) has been interested in Orin. But Lavinia wanted to put off marriage until she knows that Peter would survive the war.

Dad and brother Orin eventually return from the war, although Dad is in many ways a broken man. He's already getting up there in years considering how he's already got two adult children and he's reaching the age where it's not uncommon for a man to suffer a fatal heart attack, especially if he's spent four years fighting a stressful war. Lavinia knows about Mom's dalliance with Brant, and knows that if Dad learns about it, it will kill him. Worse, Mom is becoming the vindictive sort of person who would tell the husband she hates about this affair just so it will kill him and leave Mom free to marry Brant. And if that doesn't do it, Mom can always try to get some poison that will do the job.

Unbelievable, all of this drama happens just in The Homecoming. We're an hour into the movie, and we've got two more sections to deal with. The Hunted deals with the aftermath of the death of the patriarch. Orin doesn't seem ready to take over the family, especially considering the sort of relationship he had with his mother. He too wouldn't be able to deal with learning about Mom's relationship with Adam. Lavinia tries to turn Orin against Mom by making him see that Mom has been having that affair with Adam, while Christine tries to turn him against his own sister by claiming to him that Lavinia is going insane. And then comes The Haunted. By now, Mom has died, too, but Orin and Lavinia can't escape their respective pasts.

I've never seen the stage version of Mourning Becomes Electra, which as I understand goes on even longer than the movie version, which is long at 159 minutes. At least, it's 159 minutes in the print TCM ran. Supposedly the original cut was even longer (which would make sense if the play was longer), and that got edited down to under two hours for American audiences with the British still getting the 159-minute version. In any case, it's a slog. It's easy to see why the movie was a box office failure.

However, Rosalind Russell gives a fine performance and picked up an Oscar nomination, as did Michael Redgrave. Kirk Douglas was just starting out at this point; I think this is even before Out of the Past. So he doesn't have all that much to do, although he shows he's a more than capable actor. It's just a shame that nobody could figure out how to edit the material down into something that would work if conceived as a two-hour film.