mourning becomes electra (M5)

O'neill does greek tragedy. difficult to take, plotwise, but the acting by michael redgrave and especially rosalind russell carries it through. a civil war family, this time from the north. mother loves a man (not hubby) and daughter loved the same man until she discovered that mother loved him. hubby returns home from war and wife tells him of her cheating heart and when his faulty heart trembles and he asks for his medicine she gives him poison instead. daughter (rosalind) comes in to discover mother's deed. brother returns from the war, touched. daughter proves to brother (michael redgrave) that mother loves a cheater. brother kills the cheater. when they bring the news to mother, mother kills herself. (her last word- Life! disdainful. and then a gunshot). brother cannot recover from his mother's suicide and his role in it, so he commits suicide. daughter is not weak like brother and mother, but she will remain in the mansion with the shutters nailed shut, unable to be anything other than faithful to the dead. father played by raymond massey (whose greatest role was as john brown and also the guy from the other planet). the mother was some foreign lady i've never seen before. solid B

also saw another movie "a few dollars more" about two bounty hunters who team up against a particularly evil man. highly rated, but i didn't like it. solid C. first team up of lee van cleef and eastwood before good bad and ugly.