Word: mannon
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Neill employed the classical plot as a framework in which he could examine dramatically the suppressed guilt he saw in the Puritan mind. The murder and desire for revenge that divides the austere Mannon family into two camps is also the conflict between Puritanical repression and the open sensuality of the foreigner. Except for details of place and time, O'Neill has not had to change Aeschylus' story at all: the Trojan War has become the Civil War, and Agemmemnon is now the victorious General Ezra Mannon...
Exceptional acting in the main roles overcomes the picture's constant danger of falling into absurdity. Katina Paxinou plays Ezra Mannon's voluptuous, murderous wife with such a convincing mixture of malice and weakness that one forgets completely that the character is itself unrealistic and even ludicrous. Her murder of Ezra is revenged by her two children, the weak Orin, and the strong Lavina (the Electra of Aeschylus). After killing their mother's lover and making her commit suicide, they are obsessed by their own guilt, and Orin, who is played superbly by Michael Redgrave, commits suicide himself, while Lavinia...
...monstrously affectionate children then suffer a monstrous expiation. Demented by remorse and ingrown desire, the son shoots himself in order to join mother. Daughter determines to "live alone with the dead, and keep their secrets, and let them hound me, until the curse is paid out and the last Mannon...
...incestuous theme have been ground smooth in the dialogue without losing a jot of theatrical shock. The Grecian mood, though it echoes rather tinnily through the New England characters, reverberates grandly on the super-loud sound track, in what O'Neill calls the "sumptuous simplicity" of the Mannon mansion, in the classic drape of the costumes, in the still, pure lighting of the picture...
Reticently Anderson. The spinsterish Olga of The Three Sisters rose to fame, 18 years ago, as the sultry siren of Cobra. Since then Australian-born Actress Anderson has played Lavinia Mannon in O'Neill's, Mourning Becomes Electro, the Queen in the Gielgud Hamlet, the Mother of Jesus in Family Portrait, Lady Macbeth to the Macbeth of Maurice Evans. Quiet, practical, an actress without frills, she has less glow than Actress Cornell, less glitter than Actress Gordon, greater range and resourcefulness than either. Of her Critic Percy Hammond once remarked that, unlike other actresses, she could be "reticently...