The Long Voyage Home

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Genre: Westerns
Rating: NR
Release Date: 22-MAY-2007
Media Type: DVD

Eugene O'Neill loved this feature-length adaptation of his one-act sea plays, with intelligent bridging material written by Dudley Nichols and a final movement, both hellish and elegiac, appropriate to the onset of World War II. John Ford directed, in his more self-consciously arty vein (à la The Informer) but with no loss of power or passion. It's entirely fitting that the director shared his panel in the credits with cinematographer Gregg Toland, who had just shot The Grapes of Wrath for him in hard, dust-bowl sunlight and would next enter the labyrinth of Orson Welles's Citizen Kane; you'd be thrilled to have any frame of this film blown up and hanging on your wall.

The focus is on the working seamen aboard a merchant ship making its way from the Caribbean to New York harbor and then England, with dangerous cargo on the transatlantic leg. Thomas Mitchell (who had won a 1939 Oscar in Ford's Stagecoach) gives a career-best performance as Driscoll; Ian Hunter plays the enigmatic shipmate known only as "Smitty"; Ford regulars Barry Fitzgerald, John Qualen, Ward Bond, Arthur Shields, and Joseph Sawyer fill key roles; and the top-billed John Wayne contributes a surprisingly effective supporting performance as Ole, a gentle Swedish giant who really belongs on a farm somewhere. Although neglected in recent years--and seriously in need of restoration to do justice to its magnificent images--this movie has a permanent place of honor in one of the most amazing three-year creative streaks (throw in Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, and How Green Was My Valley) any director ever had. --Richard T. Jameson