Desire Under the Elms

Hollywood, the factory of mass entertainment, has occasionally felt the need to produce films that are, for want of a better word, 'worthy'. There are notable exceptions of course in the case of Sidney Lumet, William Wyler and Daniel Mann but generally the attempts to bring plays to the screen are hampered by cinema's constraints and compromises.

I first saw this on TV when I was fourteen and it stuck with me ever since. I re-watched at at age 64 and still love it.

Loren and Perkins smoke up the screen in this black and white, well-done love story. It is fascinating to see how quickly an all-American father and son can be weak for the same foreign woman.

I originally watched this movie as an assignment for school to compare it with the similarities in the play Phaedra by Racine from the year 1677. I enjoyed the movie and was especially intrigued to see Sophia Loren so young and debuting in Hollywood.

Overwrought is too mild a word for this lulu of a Gothic melodrama. Of course being a Eugene O'Neill story the epic tragedy is no surprise but it is turned out in purple prose and declamatory acting.

It's a while since I saw this film, but it has remained in my memory ever since. A solid drama with some impressive performances by Anthony Perkins, Burl Ives and Sophia Loren.

It's an interesting movie, with a very good story from Eugene O'Neill...The drama is well performed by the protagonists, specially Sophia Loren (less by Perkins).

This movie was made primarily as a star vehicle and things like the artistic integrity of the plot were thought of as unimportant. Needless to say, the movie suffered noticeably.

Well, this was quite a surprise. Based on the largely unfavourable reviews, I was expecting a laughable, musty melodrama with very few redeeming qualities.