The Movie Man

Abstract

If one wished to establish a hit parade of Eugene O’Neill’s plays, one might argue that The Movie Man could reasonably compete with a few others for the last place. However, stating that this early dramatic work can be viewed as a clumsy attempt by a young playwright does not sum it all up.1 In spite of its flaws, like many early works, The Movie Man deserves some critical attention because it exposes a series of threads that O’Neill later wove in different shapes, both themati-cally and aesthetically. The purpose of this essay, then, is to analyze the causes—past and present—for this failure, contrasting some thematic or aesthetic aspects with O’Neill’s future writing modes. Highlighting how the young playwright failed will be the first step to explain why this one-act play led to a dramatic dead end. Still, this initial failure will not merely serve to explain why, contrary to some early plays, The Movie Man can be ignored by directors. It will also show why it remains interesting for critics, as a crossroads of genres, a possible starting point to define a new aesthetic frame within which, however, the playwright never included his future works.