# The Iceman Cometh (1973 film)

The Iceman Cometh is a 1973 American drama film directed by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay, written by Thomas Quinn Curtiss, is based on Eugene O'Neill's 1946 play of the same name. The film was produced by Ely Landau for the American Film Theatre, which from 1973 to 1975 presented thirteen film adaptations of noted plays.
The film was screened at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, but it wasn't entered into the main competition.
The film, 3 hours 59 minutes in length, had two intermissions.
This was the last film for both Robert Ryan and Fredric March. March developed prostate cancer in 1970, causing him to retire from acting. Ryan died before the film's release.

## Plot

The film begins in a bar with a group of regulars. All are satisfied with their present drunken state. Each are anticipating the arrival of a salesman named Hickey who has subsidized their pipe dreams, and each year celebrated owner Harry Hope's birthday. But when Hickey arrives, he proclaims pipe dreams the enemy and begins to preach a better life in the name of friendship. At first the regulars reject their pipe dreams, but in the end reject Hickey, who eventually admits he murdered his wife. After Hickey is taken away by the authorities, the regulars label him insane rather than deal with their own weaknesses and return to their previous lives.

## Cast

* Lee Marvin as Theodore "Hickey" Hickman
* Fredric March as Harry Hope
* Robert Ryan as Larry Slade
* Jeff Bridges as Don Parritt
* Bradford Dillman as Willie Oban
* Sorrell Booke as Hugo Kalmar
* Hildy Brooks as Margie
* Nancy Juno Dawson as Pearl
* Evans Evans as Cora
* Martyn Green as Cecil Lewis
* Moses Gunn as Joe Mott
* Clifton James as Pat McGloin
* John McLiam as Jimmy Tomorrow
* Stephen Pearlman as Chuck Morelo
* Tom Pedi as Rocky Pioggi
* George Voskovec as Piet Wetjoen
* Don McGovern as Moran
* Bart Burns as Lieb

## Production

Director John Frankenheimer later said:
   We found the most difficult thing was to cut it. We cut 1 hour and 20 minutes out of the original, but by the time we'd finished it we'd put back in an hour. It was a marvelous movie – up til now (1974) my best experience. We were like a repertory company; we never wanted it to end. I tried to show Hickey as sane and not the way I've seen him interpreted, as insane. I think you have to live your life without illusions, not with them. Pauline Kael said in her review that you only have to look at photos of O'Neill to see this was a face with no illusions.

## Release

Both the 178 minute theatrical cut and the 239 minute director's cut were released on Blu-ray in 2019 by Kino Lorber as a 2K restoration. However, the director's cut reportedly had to be cobbled together from another print, as the extra scenes are of much worse quality than the theatrical footage.

## Reception

Roger Ebert gave the film his highest possible grade of four stars and wrote: "The play was clearly too difficult to be done as an ordinary commercial movie, but now it has been preserved, with a series of brilliant performances and a virtuoso directing achievement, in what has to be a definitive film version." Ebert ranked The Iceman Cometh fifth on his year-end list of the best films of 1973.
Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote in a less enthusiastic review that while watching the film "you get the feeling that you're being taken on a guided tour of one of the greatest American plays ever written, instead of seeing a screen adaptation with a life of its own."
Variety declared: "The excellence of the cast alone, and the fame of the work and its author make this filmed stage play worth the ticket ... It requires stamina, of course, to sit through four hours, but the experience is very special."
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded three-and-a-half stars out of four and stated: "The pleasures of this great play are so many and so strong that this frequently ordinary rendering of it on film leaves its power virtually undiminished."
Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "'No play is too long that holds the interest of its audience,' Eugene O'Neill once told an interviewer ... Even with editing, John Frankenheimer's filmed version of the play runs four hours plus two intermissions. But O'Neill was right and the film, like the play, holds its commanding grip on the viewer over the whole distance."
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote that the play "has been given a straightforward, faithful production in handsome dark-toned color" that "Frankenheimer directed fluently and unobtrusively, without destroying the conventions of the play."
The film holds a score of 91% on Rotten Tomatoes based on nine reviews.

## Awards

Robert Ryan won a Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor, National Board of Review Award for Best Actor and a Special Award from the National Society of Film Critics for his performance as Larry Slade.