The Iceman Cometh (1973)
Grade: 60
American Film Theater was a production company with a good idea. Why not film top-quality plays, casting them with famous (if past their box office prime) actors? Aware that these films would not have folks standing in line to see them at theaters, they were distributed for limited engagements only, with the audience sometimes paying in advance to see them through a subscription.
About ten films were made, from 1972 through 1975. Perhaps the most famous of these films was "The Iceman Cometh", the 1947 Eugene O'Neill play about alcoholics hiding from life behind 'pipe dreams'. It starred Lee Marvin as the garrulous Hickey, a reformed drunk seeking to free his fellow alcoholics from the bottle by shattering their 'pipe dreams'. Among the drunks are Harry Hope (Fredric March, in his final film), an elderly man who hasn't been outside in twenty years, Larry (Robert Ryan), a world-weary anarchist who fears death, and Parritt (young Jeff Bridges), who sold out his mother and 'the cause' for a turn with a prostitute.
The full length of "The Iceman Cometh" is four hours. The version that I saw had one hour removed, and another version exists that is under two hours. Not having seen the four or two hour versions, I can't compare them with the three hour version. I have heard that a television production from 1960 with Jason Robards as Hickey is superior, but I haven't seen that either. I can say that the 1973 version is a good film, but not a happy one. The large collection of eccentric and pathetic drunks have little to look forward to except the next drink, which is not always easy to obtain.
The performances are good all around. Blustery Marvin may or may not make as good a Hickey as Robards, but he had to learn and deliver a mountain of lines, which he does effortlessly. His character provides the play's suspense: why did he become reformed, what happened to his wife, and will he succeed in reforming the drunks? Not all the characters are as interesting, particulary Hugo (played by future Boss Hogg Sorrell Booke) with his ravings about the bourgeois and the willow trees.
kollers@home.com http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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