It's a beautiful film, kingrat. I have a hard time seeing it as 'not as good' as Ford's other films.
There was something I noticed watching
The Long Voyage Home this time around - it struck me so forcibly that I can't believe I didn't see it before. I used to own a lot of books with photos from stage plays as well as movies, and there was a very specific look to most of Eugene O'Neill's plays. It's actually very Fordian. The way his plays were lit, and the blocking of the actors on stage seem highly reminiscent of Ford's work, albeit more selectively done for the greatest theatrical effect.
I had always thought that in this particular film, Ford was pretty much exclusively using expressionistic styles he had learned from Murnau when he traveled to Germany. But watching the film this time I immediately and strikingly saw those old stage photos in my mind's eye.
Ford mimics the look perfectly, right down to the lighting. Still expressionism, but O'Neill's Expressionism. I would be willing to bet some of the inspiration for this movie was from the O'Neill stage plays he might have seen over the years, or stills from them. Perhaps others in the audience at that time would also recognize
The Long Voyage Home as distinctly O'Neill-ian.
We know Ford was attracted to Irish theatrical properties and writers. The playwright O'Neill was heavily influenced by Strindberg, who is said to have propelled the Expressionist movement forward in theater, in the same way Manet propelled Impressionism in art but was not of it. O'Neill was also very inspired by German drama of his time - starting in 1905 German theatre became highly Expressionistic. The themes often took the form of a lowly protagonist on a pilgrimage, or a fruitless search, ending with his destruction by forces out of his control. Sound familiar?
Other themes dealt with the protagonist's discovery of the corruption of bourgeois values, and his rejection of them; or on a more uplifting note, spiritual awakening. But of course, in the end it didn't matter that the hero's eyes were opened, because it was too late.
“Isn't it, after all, pretty stupid, to demand that art deal only with the obvious realities of the world, when there are so many realms of emotion, of imagination, of cosmic experience, which the artist is better fitted, spiritually, to explore and interpret to us than anyone else”
- -Sheldon Cheney 1921
O'Neill was the first successful American playwright to use expressionism to put his ideas forward in plays like
The Hairy Ape,
The Great God Brown,
Strange Interlude and
The Emperor Jones. His expressionism was extremely psychological, and he also used ideas put forth by Freud and Jung in his work.
The look of O'Neill's successful German-inspired plays was very different from the realistic plays of the early 1900's and 1910's that the expressionists were rebelling against. Deep contrast in lighting, machine-like sets or ones with extremely skewed perspective (with raked floors or ramps and views not normally seen inside a regular proscenium arch), the use of masks to hide or exhibit true feelings, all these extraordinary devices were used to show man's interior relationships to women, other men, their work, their dreams, their government, the powers that be, their fate, etc. Exaggeration and distortion for emotional effect was the name of the game. O'Neill sometimes combined realism with expressionism for emotional effect. I think Ford did too.
some of the flatter lighting of the shipboard scenes in Ford's film reminded me of O'Neill's early realistic shipboard plays, like Bound East for Cardiff
The Iceman Cometh
The Hairy Ape
Days Without End
In fact, I began to ponder the many similarities between Ford and O'Neill... both New Englanders, bith Irish, both drawn irresistibly to the sea, both hard drinkers, both artists with a singular vision, both drawn to German Expressionism, and yet not bound by it in any way, eventually moving on from it, or incorporating facets into a different style.
Then there are the differences - Ford came from a large, rowdy Irish family, O'Neill from a small neurotic one. O'Neill grew up quite ill, making him subject to more daydreaming, possibly, than Ford, though I can only guess. It could of course be a similarity, but I just don't know Anyhow, the men seem very similar to me when I think about it.
I wondered why Ford did not do any more O'Neill plays? I guess he must have figured he'd done one pretty near perfectly, and moved on to something new.