Movies Similar to Desire under the Elms (1958)

Director Delbert Mann and screenwriter Irwin Shaw adapt Eugene O'Neill's 20th-century version of a Greek tragedy to the screen with a bit more discretion than need be. The story takes place in the New England of the 1840s. Emotionally cool but passionately hot farmer Burl Ives the smoldering Sophia Loren as his third wife. Anthony Perkins arrives to ignite this powder keg of pent-up lust, with Perkins and Loren engaging in a semi-incestuous love affair. When Loren becomes pregnant, Ives thinks the child is his own and the heat it turned up considerably. And with Eugene O'Neill aping Greek tragedy, could infanticide be far behind? ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi