The Long Voyage Home

Shot in stunning chiaroscuro by master cinematographer Gregg Toland, THE LONG VOYAGE HOME is John Ford’s and screenwriter Dudley Nichols’s lyrical adaptation of four one-act plays by Eugene O’Neill, distilled into one movingly expressive human drama. En route from the West Indies to Baltimore aboard the British tramp steamer the SS Glencairn, a motley crew of men—including Irishman Driscoll (Thomas Mitchell), young Swede Olsen (John Wayne), and Brit Smitty (Ian Hunter)—confront both personal demons and the specter of World War II. When the ship takes on a cargo of dynamite and suspicion grows that one of the crew members may be a German spy, tension and fear threaten the men’s camaraderie.