Review of Desire Under the Elms

The acting is superb, but O'Neill, as usual, does not make a too convincing story. Sophia Loren shines from the very beginning she steps into the hut of the living dead, who don't know they are living dead - the brothers try to escape the fact by leaving for California, but Burl Ives as Ephraim is hopelessly stuck in his own absurd morbidity. Anthony Perkins as Eben tries to rebel but fails, seems to succeed in falling for Sophia Loren but blows it, and so it all ends up in a totally unnecessary and illogical disaster, maybe just for the dramatic effect of it - that was maybe O'Neill's idea. It's difficult to find any better one. The highlight of the film is the christening party, when Burl Ives really bursts forth without reins turning his own party into a rowdy scandal - without being aware of it himself. That's maybe my chief objection against most of O'Neill's plays - his characters never realize their own limitations, and so there is almost no psychology, and the result is rather casual and almost base. The cinematography is good, Elmer Bernstein's music is quite appropriate, and all the lesser characters, especially at the party, are excellent. But all you have in the end is the total void of the desolation of the leading man's desperate futility.