Mourning Becomes Electra

The Mannons - parents Ezra (Raymond Massey) and Christine (Katina Paxinou), and their grown adult children Lavinia (Rosalind Russell) (Vinnie to most who know her) and Orin (Sir Michael Redgrave) - are a wealthy and well respected New England family. Ezra is a war hero and former mayor of the town in which they live. Vinnie and Orin seem destined to marry their childhood friends, brother and sister Peter (Kirk Douglas) and Hazel Niles (Nancy Coleman). But most in town realize that the Mannons' public facade masks some hidden issues. Indeed, the Mannons are a dysfunctional family. Vinnie has a special bond with Ezra, and Orin has a special bond with Christine (Orin, a mama's boy, is called a cry-baby by Vinnie), both relationships bordering on the romantic. For Ezra and Christine, that romantic love for their child replaces what is missing from their own marriage. Ezra states that he loves Christine, but feels she doesn't return that affection. He does not realize the true, deep seated hatred she has for him. The beginning of the end for the family starts while Ezra and Orin are away fighting in the Civil War, the hope for Orin being that the experience will turn him into a man. Vinnie, in love with a ship's Captain named Adam Brant (Leo Genn), learns that Adam is having an affair with her mother. Jealousy turns into hatred for both when Vinnie further learns of Adam's true parentage. As Adam and Christine plot for a life together, Vinnie, upon Orin and Ezra's return from the now ended war, tries to convince her brother, who has returned a war hero and therefore a man, of their mother's infidelity and the appropriate action to take. The resulting events ultimately place Orin and Vinnie at odds with each other, they who end up having different priorities in achieving love and happiness, or at least peace, which seems to be missing from the Mannon household.