DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS
US, 1958, 111 minutes, Black and White.
Burl Ives, Sophia Loren, Anthony Perkins.
Directed by Delbert Mann.
Desire Under the Elms is the film version of Eugene O'Neill's famous melodrama, set in a New England Puritan-style rural community of the 1860's. The Puritan influence on twentieth century American attitudes has fascinated many American novelists and dramatists - Arthur Miller's work, especially The Crucible, coming to mind. But they are following a strong earlier tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville.
This searching of the Puritan ethos has highlighted the predestination attitudes towards being saved or being damned, the sense of sin and guilt that was inculcated and publicly exposed on so many occasions that sinners sought to keep their sins hidden and their public reputation untarnished. The zeal for hard work and the belief that the results of hard work are the reward of righteousness also came to the fore.
O'Neill explored this American tradition in his plays, especially his autobiographical play. Long Day's Journey into Night. Desire Under the Elms was one of Sophia Loren's earliest English-speaking roles and, of course, she fits the part perfectly; the hot-blooded and the ambitious young bride of the patriarchal Ephrem. Ephrem is played by Burl Ives, reminding us of a similar role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Anthony Perkins contributes his usual worthwhile performance as the youngest son, Eben. Melodramatic, certainly, the film is an interesting study of ambition, greed, vengeance and guilt.
1. What impressions does the film give of the New England Puritan ethic with its relentless hard work and tyranny in the home in the name of God?
2. Would you agree that Eben's mother had just cause to train her son to hate his father and plan for vengeance? (Remember the Genesis story of Rebecca and Jacob).
3. What impression does Eben make - vengeful, with enormous ambitions and sustaining hopes; a Jacob to his brothers; rough Esau as he buys out their shares, playing on their stupidity, their greed and their fear and hatred of their father?
4. Who is Eben really like, his mother or his father? His father declares he is like his mother?
5. What impression does Ephrem make - his hardness, his assumption that he is right, righteous and in communion with God, and likening himself to a prophet called by God to marry?
6. What impression does Anna make with her scheming and ambitious ideas, her poverty in Naples, abandoned by the sailor, a waitress wanting a real home, "My Home"? What of her taunting of Eben, her thwarting him? Her turning of father against son misfires later. How?
7. Examine the relationship of Anna and Eben - from lust to love and finally desperation - when Eben is ready to use the pitchfork against his father.
S. The baby as crucial to the plot - Ephrem's pride and arrogance in virility, his rudeness to his sons. What kind of man is he? What is Eben's reaction - believing his father that Anna wanted the child so that she could dispossess him?
9. The murder - credible? What did it tell you about Anna?
10. Why did Eben accept guilt? What was the prospect for Anna and Eben at the end? Was true justice done?
11. Discuss the visualising of the changing of the seasons and other devices for giving a strong impression of the severe rural setting.
