Mourning Becomes Electra (1947)

hyped garbage

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

If you're up for a two-and-a-half hour disturbing, heavy domestic drama starring Rosalind Russell and Katina Paxinou, you're a better man than I. I fell asleep twice during Mourning Becomes Electra, the film that was supposed to win Roz her Best Actress Oscar; a surprising upset brought Loretta Young to the podium instead for her silly, likable role in The Farmer's Daughter. I don't usually like Roz, so it's understandable that I couldn't make it all the way through, but even if you appreciate her style of dramatics, you won't like this movie. Eugene O'Neill wrote the original play, but he based it off the Greek tragedy Oresteia, so you should know what you're getting into. At the start of the story, Roz and her mother Katina are waiting for her father, Raymond Massey, and her brother, Michael Redgrave, to return home from the Civil War. Even though Kirk Douglas is courting Roz, she has feelings for Leo Genn-what will she do when she sees Leo kissing her mother? I know, that plot synopsis sounds pretty disgusting and uncomfortable, but believe me, that's only the start of the gross-and I mean that in both definitions of the word-dysfunction of the film. Mourning Becomes Electra is hands-down the most disturbing old movie I've ever seen. I had to split it up over the course of three days, because I kept falling asleep or feeling nauseous. It doesn't matter that Rosalind Russell had to perform an extremely heavy, emotional role; she shouldn't have won the Oscar in 1948. No one should have been rewarded for being a part of this film. It's horrible.Katina Paxinou gave one of the worst performances in film history. I understand why she was cast; Hollywood must have thought they were being clever in casting a Greek actress in a film based off a play based off a traditional Greek tragedy. But everyone else in the movie had an American accent, and the film took place in America after the Civil War-Katina's accent was never referenced or explained. Not only was it extremely difficult to understand what she's even saying, but she often put emphasis on the wrong words, and her melodramatic delivery made me continually cringe. She was supposed to be a beautiful, alluring woman that every man is in love with, but she was a repulsive, over-acting hag that would have been booed off the stage had she been in a live performance.

A stylish show with great performances of the best actors is not enough to varnish over the shortcomings of this mammoth mummy version of a great story. If you know the Aeschylus original, you just have to compare him with O'Neill and find O'Neill dwarfed to almost nothing.The Aeschylus play dramatizes a true story of flesh and blood and towering passion, Agamemnon is the lord of the world and returns home after ten years of absence in war with even a prisoner for a mistress, and his wife and queen Clytamnestra axes him to death in his bath out of long built up fury. She murders the mistress too. Her children are Electra and Orestes, and there is a younger daughter as well. Orestes has a close childhood friend Pylades, who helps Orestes and Electra to avenge their father. Orestes kills both his mother and his mother's lover, and that's the story.There is no Pylades in the O'Neill version and no younger sister. There is no chorus, which is vital in the Greek play for reflecting universal sentiment, and no poetry. Pylades is replaced by Kirk Douglas, who loves Electra but ultimately abandons her to her mourning.The axing of Agamemnon is by O'Neill replaced by Mrs Mannon stealing poison into her husband's medicine, who suffers from heart failure.Raymond Massey is impressing as usual as the general, Rosalind Russell gives her life's performance as Electra finally sealing herself up in mourning when both her mother and brother have shot themselves, she is actually innocent to any crime in the family while she accepts all the blame all the same, Michael Redgrave makes another of his many virtuoso performances of eccentricity and madness, Kirk Douglas is himself, Leo Genn is the murdered lover but don't get much to do or say before he is murdered, while perhaps the most impressing is Katina Paxinou as the mother, the only convincing character in this film, for her beauty and very expressive acting, more evident in her vibrations than in her talk.It's an interesting film, of course, but it's like a stranded whale, hopelessly dead and morbid and void of the original Greek zest, which is preserved and delivered only by Katina Paxinou.In brief, Aeschylus is to be preferred to this banal americanization of a great story reduced to petty humdrum provincialism. Not even the music constantly repeating itself manages to bring this show to any inspiring level. It's worth seeing though for the splendid dresses of the 1860s. The director did not make another film.

The writing, direction and acting have joined forces into creating one of the most ludicrous concoctions I have ever witnessed. I love classic films and theatre and the acting greats involved usually do a fine jobs in other films,but this is their exception. Rosalind Russell who is an exceptional pro winds up being a prototype for Carol Burnett's Norma Desmond creation with Redgrave playing wide eyed mad as well! The Greek actress playing the mother Christine greedily chews the scenery and her moaning is a hoot ("Mother, don't moan.")! Even young Kirk Douglas tries to rise above the material, but soon is weighted down by the "melo-hammy" play, He does look quite relieved to leave his final scene. I was half expecting to see the wonderful Henry Hull turn to the camera and say,"You folks are lucky-you can leave..I have to stay here." If you want to have some real unintended laughs then I suggest this creaking groaner!

I found this DVD at Borders last week. I had not known a movie version of MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA had ever been made. I took it off the shelf assuming this would be something from about 1970, when a fair number of stage plays were being filmed. That this was from 1947 surprised me. I bought it and was again surprised to find that, unlike almost any film from that era, the actors didn't speak three times faster than people actually do in life. Rosalind Russell is perfect in this uncharacteristic role. Usually she plays wise-cracking sophisticates. Here she plays it straight, which works beautifully. I absolutely see her as this character. Michael Redgrave gives a harrowing performance as her tortured brother, a recently returned Civil War veteran. He delivers one of O'Neill's greatest speeches, a recitation of his moment of military triumph. It's gut-wrenching. I haven't been able to find where this was filmed, but, if it was filmed in Hollywood I have to say I think there was a large British presence in this production. The miking is good, which makes me think it was filmed in Hollywood, British sound being wretched until the advent of James Bond, but the opening credits, shown over a roiling sea, are not in the manner of Hollywood's opening credits in 1947, which are usually shown on placards. It apparently played only briefly and had its last act cut. The IMAGE DVD seems to restore this movie to its original length. (Another review on IMDb says that, after the opening a segment called THE HUNTED was cut. My IMAGE DVD has a segment called THE HAUNTED. However it's spelled, the cut segment is back.) O'Neill is a rough dose of salts, but with serious actors, his plays are very moving. In the hands of a director who knows how to make use of film, a great play can be made into a fine movie, and this is such a movie. I recommend this highly.