By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Regardless how much torment of troubled souls is potentially packed into the dense and combustible words of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, the final test of this great drama is in how it is presented and played. The actors and, behind them, the director, are the fallible factors.

Scarcely could this be demonstrated more impressively than it is in the generally stunning motion picture rendering of it that was given its world premiere last night in the new Loew's Tower East at Third Avenue and 72d Street.

More than the pouring forth of language is an essential here, more than the sharply apt projection of expressions and attitudes. These are standard requirements of a proper performance on the stage.

But now comes the added requirement of fitting the play to the screen, confining its almost-three-hour action in the physical bounds of one set, obtaining cinematic momentum with nothing more than the clash of characters. For the producers of the film have firmly held to the letter and limits of the play.

Except that the taut and testy Tyrones—father, mother, and two adult sons—are initially introduced in a family wrangle on the lawn of their Connecticut summer home, the entire evolution of this small wrangle—which develops into an exposé and a shattering clash of all the skeletons in their closets and continues on into the depths of night—is played in the stuffy confines of the first floor of the house.

Yet, cloistered in these confines and bound to every long scene in the script (some scenes, if you'll pardon the mention, are overlong on the stage), the actors expound vast ire and anguish in dizzying bursts of voice and mood. Under the direction of Sidney Lumet, they charge the place with electricity.

That is, on the whole they do so. They develop an overall sense of deep disquiet within the passionate individuals and an acrid air of smoldering savagery. But just as the O'Neill script is marked by sharp rises and falls of the spirits and moods of his volatile people, close reflections of his own family, the performances of the actors are marked by unevenness.

Most controlled and magnificent is Ralph Richardson in the devastating role of the aging father and matinee idol. His explicit awareness and command of the fatal ambivalence of this old rascal, his voluminous, flowing sentiment, and his terrible, corroding canker of pride and insecurity are brilliantly drawn. The performance reaches an absolute peak in the long scene in which he tells his younger son of the glories and satisfactions of his youth.

Mr. Richardson makes, beyond question, the most tragic figure on the screen.

Katharine Hepburn is tricky and uneven in the difficult role of the wife and mother in this divided family—probably because she has too much to do. In the moments of deepest anguish, she is vibrant with hot and tragic truth, an eloquent representation of a lovely woman brought to feeble, helpless ruin. But she is put to so much repetition in the first hour or so of the film, in hinting at the ultimate revelation that narcotics have her hooked, that she strains her own gifts of airy acting and the patience of workaday folks.

A little less of Miss Hepburn would help the film.

On the other hand, Jason Robards, Jr., could give it a little more—at the start, anyhow. His performance and his character do not take form until the thundering scene with his brother, when he drunkenly rips the kid apart. Then he suddenly bursts like a volcano with the hot lava in the character.

Dean Stockwell, as the kid brother, is, alas, a minus quantity—a feeble representation of a restless, consumptive youth. He is out of his class with the others. What a shame that he has to come on and try to express his poetic nature right after Mr. Richardson has played his biggest scene!

Jeanne Barr counterpoints Miss Hepburn's maundering rather nicely in one scene as a maid.

One might wish that the action were more mobile, that Mr. Lumet had been able to use his camera to a lot more purpose, such as he does in one deeply touching shot where he follows the aging Tyrone down a long hall and comes upon him alone in the dining room. One might wish, too, that the bits of mood music that are heard from time to time did not startle one with the impression that they were coming from someone playing a piano in another room.

But these are marginal observations. For what they have set out to do, Mr. Lumet and the producer, Ely Landau, have given us a fine, fair picture of a tough and maybe tedious O'Neill play.

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (MOVIE)

Directed by Sidney Lumet; written by Mr. Lumet, based on the play by Eugene O'Neill; cinematographer, Boris Kaufman; edited by Ralph Rosenblum; music by André Previn; production designer, Richard Sylbert; produced by Ely Landau and Jack J. Dreyfus, Jr.; released by Embassy Films. Black and white. Running time: 174 minutes.