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The Long Voyage Home Movie Review

The Long Voyage Home is a 1940 drama film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell and Ian Hunter. It’s not one of Ford’s best efforts.

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“Best thing to do with memories is… forget ’em“

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A merchant ship’s crew tries to survive the loneliness of the sea and the coming of a war. This is one of the first ever World War II movies, but it’s not about the war at all. In fact, war is only mentioned in the second half while most of the picture is about the trials and travails of this ship crew.

The film gets the loneliness of life at sea and the nostalgia of the land as exemplified in some truly beautiful and moving speeches in the second act. It is at its best when it is exploring these themes, but otherwise the plot is very slight and most of it goes through the motions.

My main gripe with The Long Voyage Home has to be its pacing. It is terribly slow, and thus the movie is never as involving as you would like it to be. The charm and even the humor is there in certain sections, but more should have been done with its plot. It needed a bigger message, more emotion and better characterization.

Yes, this is one of those examples of a star-studded, but problematic picture that straddles its actors with very underdeveloped roles. Frankly, that is the most disappointing thing about it. For a film that is all about the interpersonal relationships of sailors, it is surprisingly inferior in their personalities.

The actors did the best they could with these roles with Thomas Mitchell and Ian Hunter being particularly memorable, but John Wayne was utterly forgettable in an overly subdued role for the man of his stature. The number of characters also should have been reduced.

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Technically speaking, The Long Voyage Home is rather strong. The score is excellent, the direction from Ford is reliably fine and the cinematography is particularly inspired with some strangely unique framing of certain shots that made the viewing experience quite interesting. As a result, those technical nominations for the Oscars were deserved, but not the main ones.